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Title: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Brian Massumi ISBN: 0-8166-1402-4 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.31 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: mad creation
Comment: In their final work together, "What is Philosophy?" Guattari and Deleuze envision philosophy as moving at infinite speeds in a mad creation of concepts. This formula is expressed marvelously in "A Thousand Plateaus". In roughly each "plateau", the authors explore a different opposition, although always in relation to the previous concepts, as well as those that are yet to be fully elaborated. Some of these oppositions include smooth/ Striated, rhizome/ tree, war machine/ State, etc. Each one loosely overlaps with the others, although by no means are they synonymous. However, because a similar formula is used to explore each of these oppositions, this greatly facilitates understanding the book, especially since the authors aren't always the clearest writers. However, because many of the central themes (including the fundamental opposition between creative forces and those forces which attempt to halt creation or bring it under control) are repeated, even if confusing at first, this book eventually starts to make sense. The ideas expressed in it are applicable to countless aspects of society and life (and even inorganic structures), such as the rhizome, which desribes a system in which elements interact horizontally, maintaining their heterogeneity (a prime example of this is the internet). My only complaint about "A Thousand Plateaus" is that the authors, despite their rigorous defining of various concepts, often present examples of these concepts poorly, assuming that the reader has knowledge of the examples, introducing them without preparation and then leaving them behind. For example, in plateau 3, "the geology of morals", i was able to understand the basic "abstract machine" described but unable to understand how the given examples fit into the plateau without resorting to an outside source. Of course, why use Guattari and Deleuze's examples when there are numerous instances of these "abstract machine" all around us?
Rating: 5
Summary: The masterpiece of modern French philosophy.
Comment: Anti-Oedipus, the first collaboration by Deleuze and Guattari, is more famous than a Thousand Plateaus, but this is their masterpiece. It takes a while to get used to their strange terms and phrases, and an English-schooled "analytical" philosopher would probably find their work to be nonsense, but D & G work differently. They are creators of concepts, and A Thousand Plateaus is overflowing with them. The book moves from meditations on the face, to nomads, to courtly love, to geology, to, well, a thousand other things . . . you name it. A reader who is willing to be led where they will take him is in for quite a trip.
Philosophically, D & G seem to be proponants of a dynamic, highly charged, pre-conventional world, in which even individual identity is not yet a given. They do not suppose that we can live in this world and function normally, but we can tap into it, so to speak, and thereby harness energy for more creative living in the "normal" world, the world of conventional ideas, personal identities, etc. (and to some extent transform the "normal" world). But to paraphrase their ideas in this way is to lose the excitement they generate as they dive into specific topics--the musical refrain, schizophrenia, rhizomes, laws, and so on and so on--ever coming up with new and surpising interpretations. This book has endless riches for the reader to discover.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting read
Comment: Crunched for time on an English essay, and because ILL'ing the book would have taken too long, I was forced to buy this book. So I figured I would review it.
While overall it is very interesting, and the style matches the nature of the content (postmodernism discussed in fragmented chps, props to the authors), this book is dense as hell, often very pretentious; you can't read this while listening to music, trust me.
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Title: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari ISBN: 0816612250 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1983 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLanda, Manuel De Landa ISBN: 0942299329 Publisher: Zone Books Pub. Date: 18 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari by Brian Massumi ISBN: 0262631431 Publisher: The MIT Press Pub. Date: 06 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze, Paul Patton ISBN: 0231081596 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: What Is Philosophy? by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari ISBN: 0231079893 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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