A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Volume 2

1. Introduction

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Volume 2 is a collaboratively authored philosophical treatise by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, first published in French in 1980 as Mille plateaux. It constitutes the second and more expansive volume of the Capitalism and Schizophrenia project, following Anti-Oedipus (1972). Whereas Anti-Oedipus is often described as a polemical critique of psychoanalysis, fascism, and certain forms of Marxism, A Thousand Plateaus is generally regarded as a sprawling, experimental cartography of concepts that range across ontology, politics, semiotics, and aesthetics.

The book is organized into separate but interconnected “plateaus”—relatively autonomous chapters that can be entered at multiple points rather than read in strict sequence. This structure is intended to enact the central metaphor of the rhizome, a non-hierarchical model of thought and organization. Key notions such as assemblage, deterritorialization, body without organs, war machine, and smooth and striated space have become widely referenced beyond philosophy, especially in cultural theory, geography, and media studies.

Deleuze and Guattari’s text juxtaposes case studies drawn from psychoanalysis, literature, music, anthropology, geology, and mathematics with speculative conceptual construction. Proponents often interpret this method as an attempt to trace how power, desire, and knowledge operate in contemporary capitalism and to outline possible modes of transformation, or “lines of flight.” Critics, by contrast, frequently highlight the book’s stylistic density and the difficulty of pinning down its political and normative commitments.

The work’s English translation by Brian Massumi (1987) significantly broadened its impact, especially in Anglophone debates on post-structuralism and posthumanism. Since then, A Thousand Plateaus has been treated both as a key text of late twentieth-century continental philosophy and as a conceptual toolbox for diverse disciplines.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

A Thousand Plateaus emerged from the specific political, intellectual, and institutional climate of post‑1968 France. The events of May 1968, with mass student and worker uprisings, had destabilized traditional Marxist, psychoanalytic, and university authorities. In the 1970s, debates over structuralism and its “post‑structuralist” transformations shaped French philosophy, with figures such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard interrogating notions of subject, structure, and history.

Post‑1968 French Theory and Left Politics

Deleuze and Guattari wrote against the backdrop of:

The book responds to and reworks earlier theoretical currents, including structural linguistics, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, but does so in a way that many commentators regard as a departure from structuralism’s focus on stable systems.

Philosophical and Theoretical Interlocutors

Deleuze and Guattari draw on, transform, or contest:

• Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Bergson (for ontology, immanence, and creativity)
• Marx (for the analysis of capitalism’s dynamics, but reinterpreted via flows, codes, and axiomatics)
• Freud and Lacan (as targets of sustained critique over Oedipus, the unconscious, and signification)
• Structuralists such as Saussure and Lévi-Strauss (reworked into theories of regimes of signs and strata)

Institutional and Publishing Context

The book was issued by Éditions de Minuit, a press associated with avant-garde literature and experimental theory. Its style and format aligned with a broader impulse in French thought to blur lines between philosophy, literature, and the human sciences. Scholars often situate A Thousand Plateaus within the “French Theory” constellation that later became influential in the United States and elsewhere, particularly after its 1987 English translation.

3. Authors, Collaboration, and Composition

Deleuze and Guattari as Co‑authors

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) was a philosopher trained within the French academic system, known for historical studies (on Hume, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kant) and systematic works like Difference and Repetition. Félix Guattari (1930–1992) was a psychoanalyst and political militant associated with the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde and with far-left and anti-psychiatry movements.

Their collaboration, initiated in the late 1960s, combined Deleuze’s philosophical conceptuality with Guattari’s clinical and militant experience. Proponents of their joint work often emphasize that A Thousand Plateaus cannot be simply divided into a “Deleuzian” and a “Guattarian” part; the text itself insists that “we” is an assemblage and that authorship is a collective function.

Modes of Collaboration

Accounts from both authors and commentators suggest that the book emerged from a long process of discussions, notes, and drafts, with Guattari often contributing conceptual “materials” drawn from psychiatry, militant practice, and diverse reading, and Deleuze taking a leading role in the composition and stylistic shaping of the final manuscript. However, many scholars stress that this division is heuristic rather than exact.

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“We have been writing Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

This remark is frequently cited to indicate their view that subjectivity, including authorial subjectivity, is multiple and distributed.

Composition Timeline and Process

Scholars note that the plateau form allowed the authors to work non-linearly, elaborating themes in parallel rather than as steps in a single argument. This composition practice mirrors the book’s substantive commitment to multiplicity and non-hierarchical organization.

4. Place within Capitalism and Schizophrenia

A Thousand Plateaus is the second volume of the larger project Capitalism and Schizophrenia, following Anti-Oedipus (1972). The two volumes are closely linked yet distinct in tone, method, and emphasis.

Relation to Anti-Oedipus

Many commentators view Anti-Oedipus as primarily critical and diagnostic, targeting Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis, Oedipal subject formation, and certain Marxist conceptions of ideology. A Thousand Plateaus, by contrast, is often characterized as constructive and cartographic, developing a more extensive conceptual vocabulary.

Proponents of a unified reading argue that A Thousand Plateaus deepens and generalizes ideas first sketched in Anti-Oedipus—such as desiring-production and deterritorialization—into a more encompassing theory of assemblages and social fields. Others suggest that the second volume represents a partial shift, with less emphasis on “schizophrenia” as a privileged figure of resistance and more focus on nuanced analyses of capture, war machines, and micropolitics.

“Capitalism and Schizophrenia” as a Project

Within the two-volume project, A Thousand Plateaus elaborates how capitalism operates through complex interactions of deterritorialization, reterritorialization, and axiomatics, but it does so indirectly, through analyses of language, territory, war, and science. The subtitle “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” is interpreted variously:

• As indicating a contrast between capitalist axiomatization and schizophrenic lines of flight
• As marking an inquiry into how modern capitalism produces certain forms of subjectivity and madness
• As a provocation, drawing attention to the interface of political economy and psychiatry

A Thousand Plateaus thus occupies the position of extending the initial critique into a broader, more heterogeneous philosophy of social and material reality, while remaining under the overarching rubric of capitalism’s relation to processes of deterritorialization.

5. Structure and Organization of the Plateaus

Non-Linear Architecture

The book is organized into fourteen chapters called plateaus, numbered by seemingly arbitrary dates (e.g., “10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals”). Deleuze and Guattari explicitly recommend that the book can be entered at any plateau and that the order of reading need not be linear. This organization is intended to enact the principle of the rhizome, providing multiple entryways and connections rather than a hierarchical progression.

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“A book is not an image of the world. It is a rhizome, a burrow.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Plateaus as Conceptual Zones

Each plateau is a relatively self-contained “region of intensity” addressing a specific cluster of problems:

(Other plateaus fill out this network with narrative, political, aesthetic, and micropolitical analyses.)

Dates and Cross-Referencing

The apparently heterogeneous dates in the titles have been read as markers of historical episodes, conceptual events, or “chronological fictions” that connect multiple timelines. The plateaus frequently cross-reference one another: for instance, discussions of territory in “Of the Refrain” resonate with those in “The Smooth and the Striated,” while concepts like deterritorialization and assemblage recur across the book.

Commentators often emphasize that this structure discourages reading the work as a closed system. Instead, the organization invites use: readers can follow concepts, problems, or examples across plateaus, constructing their own paths through the text’s conceptual terrain.

6. Philosophical Method and Style

Constructivist and Experimental Method

Deleuze and Guattari present philosophy as the creation of concepts rather than analysis of given essences. A Thousand Plateaus exemplifies this constructivist orientation: new terms (rhizome, assemblage, body without organs) are introduced not merely as labels but as tools for thinking and intervening in reality. Proponents often describe the method as “cartographic,” mapping forces and relations rather than representing a pre-defined object.

Their approach is also explicitly experimental. They juxtapose scientific models, literary texts, political case studies, and anecdotal materials to test how concepts function across different domains. This transdisciplinary method has been praised for its inventiveness and criticized for apparent eclecticism or lack of empirical rigor.

Style: Multiplicity and Montage

A Thousand Plateaus is written in a heterogeneous style that shifts between:

• Dense theoretical exposition
• Narratives and case studies (e.g., the Wolf-Man, the Paris Commune)
• Lists, diagrams, and quasi-manifesto passages

This stylistic montage is intended to perform the very multiplicity the book theorizes. The text frequently employs neologisms, idiosyncratic uses of common terms, and puns (e.g., agencement translated as “assemblage”). Supporters see this as a way to break habitual patterns of thought; critics argue that it creates unnecessary obscurity.

Anti-Representational and Pragmatic Orientation

Deleuze and Guattari explicitly reject an image of thought where theory mirrors or represents reality. Instead, they conceive language and concepts pragmatically, as interventions in assemblages of practice and power. Statements, on their account, function as acts within collective assemblages of enunciation.

Commentators connect this method with broader post-structuralist themes: the decentering of the subject, suspicion toward universals, and focus on practices. Yet A Thousand Plateaus distinguishes itself by stressing not textuality but material processes (flows, intensities, machines) that cut across discursive and non-discursive domains.

7. Central Concepts: Rhizome, Assemblage, and Multiplicity

Rhizome

The rhizome is introduced as an alternative to the arborescent (tree-like) model of thought and organization. A rhizome is a non-hierarchical network with multiple entry points and no single origin or center. It is characterized by principles such as connection, heterogeneity, and asignifying rupture.

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“Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

In A Thousand Plateaus, the book itself, social movements, linguistic systems, and even biological or geological formations are described rhizomatically. Scholars emphasize that the rhizome is not simply a metaphor but a proposed ontological and methodological model.

Assemblage (agencement)

An assemblage is a provisional, heterogeneous configuration of elements: bodies, practices, tools, institutions, statements, affects. Rather than presupposing unified subjects or stable structures, Deleuze and Guattari analyze phenomena as assemblages that combine:

• Material components (bodies, technologies, territories)
• Expressive components (utterances, images, codes)

Assemblages are defined by their capacities—what they can do, how they connect, and how they may deterritorialize or reterritorialize. Later theorists (e.g., Manuel DeLanda, Bruno Latour) have further developed assemblage theory for social science and actor-network perspectives.

Multiplicity

The concept of multiplicity underpins both rhizome and assemblage. A multiplicity is not a collection of already individuated units but a variable, continuous set of relations and dimensions. Deleuze and Guattari draw, in part, on mathematical and topological ideas where spaces can change dimension without fixed identity.

In A Thousand Plateaus, multiplicity is opposed to both unity and simple plurality:

Proponents argue that this notion of multiplicity allows Deleuze and Guattari to reconceive subjectivity, society, and nature without recourse to essences or binary oppositions. Critics sometimes contend that the term remains metaphorical or under-specified despite its centrality.

8. Desire, Subjectivity, and the Body without Organs

Desire as Productive

Continuing themes from Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus treats desire not as lack but as productive, machinic, and immanent to social and material processes. Desire is conceived as a set of flows and connections rather than as an internal psychic state oriented toward missing objects. This leads to an account of subjectivity as an effect or dimension of assemblages, rather than as a pre-given center.

Subjectivity as Assemblage

The book analyses individuals as “dividuals”—nodes within complex networks of social, technical, and semiotic elements. Subjectivity is stratified, segmented, and always in the process of becoming. Micropolitical analyses (e.g., plateau 9 on segmentarity) show how desires are organized at molecular levels, within families, workplaces, and everyday interactions.

Commentators have linked this view to posthumanist theories that decenter the human subject, though some critics argue that it risks dissolving agency into impersonal flows.

The Body without Organs (BwO)

The Body without Organs (BwO), elaborated in plateau 6, designates a plane of consistency where intensities circulate without being fixed into functional “organs” or stable identities. It is not a literal, disembodied state, but a way of reorganizing one’s embodied capacities.

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“The Body without Organs is opposed less to organs as such than to the organization of the organs called the organism.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

They differentiate between:

This ambivalence has spurred debates. Admirers view the BwO as a powerful tool for rethinking embodiment and desire beyond disciplinary norms (with influence in queer and performance theory). Critics in psychoanalytic and feminist traditions sometimes worry that the BwO may obscure lived bodily vulnerability or specific social oppressions.

Practices of Making a BwO

Deleuze and Guattari discuss practices—drug use, masochistic rituals, artistic experimentation—that attempt to “make oneself a BwO.” They neither simply endorse nor condemn these, instead treating them as precarious experiments whose outcomes depend on how intensities are managed. This emphasis on technique and prudence has been interpreted as gesturing toward an implicit ethics of experimentation, though its contours remain contested.

9. Language, Regimes of Signs, and Faciality

Regimes of Signs

In plateau 5, Deleuze and Guattari reconceptualize language as a set of regimes of signs embedded in power relations and material practices. They distance themselves from models that treat language primarily as representation or communication. Instead, statements are seen as components within collective assemblages of enunciation—they do things (command, accuse, promise), organize social fields, and interact with non-linguistic elements.

They distinguish several regimes, including:

Scholars debate the empirical adequacy and historical generality of these typologies, but many find them suggestive for analyzing discourse-power relations.

Language as Order-Word

A central notion is the order-word (mot d’ordre), which designates statements that function as social commands, even when not overtly imperative. Everyday utterances, legal formulas, and institutional jargon are examined as order-words that distribute roles, responsibilities, and identities. Language, on this view, is fundamentally political and pragmatic, not neutral or transparent.

Faciality (visagéité)

Plateau 7, “Year Zero: Faciality,” develops the concept of faciality as a specific semiotic and political arrangement. The face is described as a surface that codes and over-codes the body, organizing identities (race, gender, normality/deviance) within what they call the “white, Christian, imperial” signifying regime.

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“The face is a politics.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

They argue that the modern face functions as a machine that reads and inscribes social meaning—who counts as human, trustworthy, criminal, etc. This leads to analyses of facial recognition, cinematic close-ups, and religious iconography.

Commentators have linked faciality to contemporary debates about surveillance, biometrics, and racialization. Critical responses note that the notion of a single “white, Christian” facial regime may flatten historical and cultural differences, while others see it as a heuristic for analyzing how visual and semiotic norms organize social hierarchies. Deleuze and Guattari also discuss strategies of defacialization—moving toward non-facial, non-anthropocentric modes of expression—which they explore further through the concept of becoming-animal in other plateaus.

10. Politics, War Machine, and Apparatus of Capture

Politics and Micropolitics

A Thousand Plateaus advances a distinctive conception of politics that operates at multiple scales. Alongside familiar macropolitical institutions (states, parties, laws), Deleuze and Guattari emphasize micropolitics: the molecular level of affects, desires, and everyday practices. They argue that fascism, for instance, must be understood not only as a state form but as a set of micro-fascist investments in families, workplaces, and subjectivities.

This approach has been influential in political theory and cultural studies, where it is used to analyze how power and resistance are distributed beyond formal institutions.

War Machine vs. State Apparatus

Plateau 12, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine,” introduces the war machine as a nomadic assemblage oriented toward movement, invention, and the creation of smooth space. It is contrasted with the State apparatus, which organizes striated space, codifies social relations, and captures mobile forces.

Deleuze and Guattari stress that the war machine is not identical to warfare; rather, the State repeatedly appropriates and turns it toward military ends. Conversely, war machines may appear in art, science, or revolutionary movements.

Apparatus of Capture

Plateau 13, “7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture,” examines how the State functions historically as an apparatus of capture that seizes flows of labor, land, money, and war machines. They trace mechanisms such as taxation, property regimes, and juridical frameworks, arguing that states and, later, capitalism convert mobile, deterritorialized flows into manageable, calculable resources.

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“The State is the model of realization for organizations that claim to integrate or discipline the decoded flows of capitalism.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (paraphrased formulation)

Commentators interpret this as a contribution to political economy that emphasizes formal mechanisms (axiomatics, capture) over traditional class analysis, though Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly reference Marx. Some Marxist critics contend that their focus on flows and capture underplays exploitation and class struggle; defenders argue that it broadens Marxist themes to include semiotic, spatial, and affective dimensions.

Overall, the concepts of war machine and apparatus of capture provide a framework for thinking about how mobile, inventive forces interact with state and capitalist forms, sometimes being subsumed, sometimes partially escaping.

11. Space, Territory, and Smooth/Striated Distinctions

Territory and Milieu

Throughout A Thousand Plateaus, territory is understood not only as physical land but as a patterned, expressive organization of space-time. Plateau 11, “Of the Refrain,” analyzes how rhythmic motifs—a bird’s song, a child’s humming—stabilize a milieu into a territory. Territory is thus both material and semiotic, shaped by refrains that mark boundaries, home, and identity.

This perspective has influenced critical geography and cultural studies, where territory is increasingly seen as dynamic and performative rather than merely geopolitical.

Smooth and Striated Space

The final plateau, “1440: The Smooth and the Striated,” develops the influential distinction between smooth and striated spaces. These are not mutually exclusive types but poles of a continuum.

Deleuze and Guattari examine examples from music (nomadic vs. sedentary styles), textiles (felt vs. woven fabric), and mathematics (vector vs. metric spaces) to illustrate how these spatial logics operate.

Interpenetration and Mutual Transformation

They emphasize that smooth and striated spaces constantly mix and transform into one another. For instance, maritime exploration (smooth) becomes organized into shipping routes and ports (striated), while strict musical forms can be “smoothed” through improvisation or electronic manipulation. This dynamic interplay prevents the concepts from being simple dualisms.

Critical geographers have adapted this framework to analyze urbanization, borders, and mobility, while digital theorists apply it to networked environments. Some critics note that the binary risks reifying complex spatial practices or romanticizing “smoothness” as inherently liberatory, though Deleuze and Guattari explicitly warn that smooth spaces can also harbor new forms of control (e.g., deterritorialized capital flows).

12. Becomings and Lines of Flight

Becomings

A Thousand Plateaus devotes extensive attention to becomings—processes by which entities cross thresholds of identity and intensity without simply imitating or identifying with another term. Plateau 10, “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible...,” elaborates a series of becomings (becoming-woman, -animal, -child, -molecular, -imperceptible).

Key characteristics include:

• Becomings are asymmetrical and non-reciprocal (humans may undergo becoming-animal, but animals are not said to undergo becoming-human).
• They involve alliances and contagions rather than resemblance (e.g., a pack, a band, a musical ensemble).
• They operate at the level of intensities and affects, altering capacities to act and be affected.

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“A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification.”

— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Feminist and queer theorists have drawn on becoming-woman and other becomings to conceptualize gender and sexual difference as dynamic processes, though some criticize the relative lack of engagement with specific feminist debates.

Lines of Flight

A line of flight (ligne de fuite) is a trajectory by which an assemblage transforms or escapes its current organization. Lines of flight are closely linked to deterritorialization; they mark points where structures crack, open, or reconfigure.

Deleuze and Guattari caution that not all lines of flight are emancipatory; some may lead to fascist or destructive outcomes. Commentators highlight this ambivalence as central to their political thought, complicating readings that treat deterritorialization or becoming as inherently liberating.

Interplay of Becomings and Lines of Flight

Becomings often occur along lines of flight: as assemblages deterritorialize, new becomings become possible (for instance, becomings-animal or -molecular in artistic or political practices). The text resists defining a final goal; the most radical process, becoming-imperceptible, is presented as a limit-point where one ceases to be individuated and merges with a plane of immanence. Interpretations diverge on whether this has ethical, mystical, or strictly conceptual significance.

13. Engagements with Science, Art, and Anthropology

Science and the “Nomad” Perspective

A Thousand Plateaus engages extensively with scientific discourses—geology, biology, mathematics, and physics. Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between Royal science (state-sanctioned, axiomatic, striating) and nomad science (experimental, following flows and singularities). For instance, in the “Geology of Morals” plateau, they appropriate geological stratigraphy to think about layers of reality (physical, biological, social).

Supporters argue that this provides a creative rethinking of science as a heterogeneous field of practices. Critics in the sciences often contend that their readings are selective, metaphorical, or anachronistic.

Art, Music, and the Refrain

Art—especially music and literature—plays a central role. Plateau 11, “Of the Refrain,” analyses how musical refrains carve out territories, generate milieus, and open lines of flight. They discuss birdsong, classical music, and modern composition to illustrate processes of territorialization and deterritorialization.

Literary references include Kafka, Melville, Proust, and others, often used to exemplify becomings, faciality, or narrative assemblages. The plateau “Three Novellas, or ‘What Happened?’” treats literary texts as laboratories for exploring event, desire, and individuation.

These engagements have made the book particularly influential in art theory, architecture, and musicology, where its concepts are used to describe creative processes and spatial design.

Anthropology and “Savages,” “Barbarians,” “Civilized”

Deleuze and Guattari draw on a range of anthropological sources (including Lévi-Strauss, Mauss, and older ethnographies) to discuss so-called “primitive” societies, nomadic groups, and state formations. They employ a tripartite schema of “savage,” “barbarian,” and “civilized” social machines (developed already in Anti-Oedipus) and expand it in discussions of apparatuses of capture and war machines.

Anthropologists have responded ambivalently. Some appreciate the way they use ethnography to challenge Eurocentric and state-centered assumptions. Others criticize their reliance on dated or second-hand sources and the risk of romanticizing “nomads” or “primitive” societies. Postcolonial scholars have also questioned the adequacy of their treatment of colonialism and race, suggesting that their focus on abstract flows may underplay historical specificities of domination.

Overall, the book’s engagements with science, art, and anthropology form part of its broader project of building concepts from heterogeneous materials, while provoking ongoing debates about the legitimacy and limits of such interdisciplinary borrowings.

14. Reception, Criticisms, and Debates

Initial Reception

Upon its 1980 publication, Mille plateaux was received in France as a dense, unconventional follow-up to Anti-Oedipus. It attracted interest among philosophers, psychoanalysts, and militants connected to post-1968 currents, but also elicited bewilderment due to its complexity. The 1987 English translation gradually expanded its audience, especially in literary theory, cultural studies, and art schools, where the book became emblematic of “French Theory.”

Major Criticisms

Scholars have raised several recurring critiques:

Supportive Readings and Developments

At the same time, the work has inspired extensive sympathetic commentary and extension:

• Political theorists use its concepts to analyze micropolitics, biopower, and new social movements.
• Feminist and queer theorists draw on becomings and the BwO, while also critically interrogating gender, race, and embodiment in the text.
• Geographers and urban theorists adopt smooth/striated space, territory, and assemblage as analytic tools.
• Science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theorists incorporate assemblage and rhizome to rethink agency and networks.

Ongoing Debates

Current debates revolve around questions such as:

• How to reconcile Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on deterritorialization with the need for stable institutions and identities in emancipatory politics.
• Whether their ontology of multiplicity can be integrated with materialist analyses of capitalism, colonialism, and racialization.
• How to interpret the ethical implications of experimentation, becomings, and the BwO.

These discussions have ensured that A Thousand Plateaus remains a contested yet central reference point across multiple disciplines.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

A Thousand Plateaus has become a canonical text in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century continental philosophy and critical theory. Its long-term impact is often traced through the diffusion of specific concepts—rhizome, assemblage, deterritorialization, body without organs, smooth/striated space, war machine—that have entered the vocabulary of multiple fields.

Influence Across Disciplines

Conceptual Afterlives

Key later works have explicitly developed or systematized concepts from A Thousand Plateaus:

• Manuel DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society reconstructs assemblage theory for social science.
• Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist writings draw on Deleuzo-Guattarian becomings and relational subjectivity.
• Bruno Latour and others adapt rhizomatic and assemblage notions for network theories.

Position in Intellectual History

Historians of philosophy generally situate A Thousand Plateaus as:

• A major statement of post-structuralist thought, moving beyond structuralism’s emphasis on stable systems.
• An alternative to phenomenology and traditional Marxism, proposing an ontology of multiplicity and processes rather than consciousness or infrastructure/superstructure models.
• A bridge between 1960s–70s French theory and later developments in Anglo-American critical and cultural theory.

While its dense style and contested claims continue to provoke debate, A Thousand Plateaus is widely regarded as one of the most influential and widely cited philosophical works of the late twentieth century, with a legacy that extends well beyond academic philosophy into social theory, the arts, and contemporary political thinking.