A Thousand Plateaus is the second part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. Written over a seven year period, A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for 'nomadic thought' and has had a galvanizing influence on today's anti-capitalist movement.
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"A rare and remarkable book." —TLS (Tls )
--This text refers to the
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Text: English, French (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
208 of 229 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm not particularly erudite, and I'm certainly not a genius. My schooling has left me (for better or worse) without any familiarity with some of the philosophers, artists and writers D&G namecheck as lynchpins of their untimely meditation.
Why, then, would I struggle with this 800-odd page monstrosity of densely-referential Gallic thought? Why am I here recommending that you do it?
Well...because it's worth the long, thorny trudge. You've got to get around some idiosyncratic vocabulary, but that's OK. Because, in fact, *A Thousand Plateaus* presents a credible candidacy for Philosophy for our Time (if you can still believe in that). The concept of the rhizome alone - burrowing, nonhierarchical, endlessly foliating thought - let alone fertile ideas like nomadology or the Body without Organs: once grasped, these are extraordinarily useful figures that can wind up restoring some sense of agency (and subversiveness, and fun) to your intellectual life. They're perfectly suited, especially, to life and work in the age of the deeply rhizomorphic Internet.
Remember, you're smart enough to understand this stuff. (I had to keep reminding myself.) Reading with partners or in groups helps, a lot. There really is a *vast* amount of provocative and useful thought in here. Go for it.
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
By M. Fisher
Format:Paperback
Why? Because your critical theory seminar was probably oversimplifying, and you're missing out on a radical piece of performance in book form. Thousand Plateaus is not 400 pages about rhizomes or nomads. That's just the vocabulary. And, I disagree with some of the other reviews here. It's not a torture to read; it's just not talking down to you. It's put together like a large circular sentence. You start somewhere in middle, or maybe at the beginning or end, not sure. You have to play catchup at first, but you will get the hang of it.
If it sounds like the structure of certain recent films (say, by David Lynch, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson) or works of fiction (like by Samuel Delaney, Haruki Murakami, or Thomas Pynchon) or minimal techno, or most museum biennials these days, then good, it should. Thousand Plateaus help to establish a framework for all of those things.
The book tries to establish a system of political, psychological and semiotic descriptions, always as a mode of resistance to all kinds of fascism, and D & G take the conflation of those levels as a given. Not just in the world of theory but also in how you think, and that's why it's written in such a particularly dense way. It tries very hard to be nonoppressive, and generous too, but for lots of people it can be a frustrating adjustment, accustomed as we are to writing that tries to be as flat and simple as possible. This book reads the way it thinks, and these two definitely prefer finesse to simplicity. Once you get into it, you may find that it's the best thing you've read for as long as you can remember. Or, at least that it makes you think in ways you don't while reading other books.
Being brainy continentals, these guys make reference to a store of intellectual history you won't be able to relate to. They namedrop like MCs, and use a highly layered prose that refers to about a dozen things at once. It probably helps if you've heard of Hjelmslev, Bergson, Liebniz and the rest of the counter-canon of Western thought, but don't let it stop you if you haven't.
If you tackle this thick, thorny thing, here's some advice: Don't read this as an assignment, but approach it like a weird painting. Go slowly and enjoy the twists and turns. Read each section twice before proceeding to the next. Enjoy the poetry that D & G employ. Take notes. When you get to the end, go back and reread the first (and maybe second) section.
If it sounds like the structure of certain recent films (say, by David Lynch, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson) or works of fiction (like by Samuel Delaney, Haruki Murakami, or Thomas Pynchon) or minimal techno, or most museum biennials these days, then good, it should. Thousand Plateaus help to establish a framework for all of those things.
The book tries to establish a system of political, psychological and semiotic descriptions, always as a mode of resistance to all kinds of fascism, and D & G take the conflation of those levels as a given. Not just in the world of theory but also in how you think, and that's why it's written in such a particularly dense way. It tries very hard to be nonoppressive, and generous too, but for lots of people it can be a frustrating adjustment, accustomed as we are to writing that tries to be as flat and simple as possible. This book reads the way it thinks, and these two definitely prefer finesse to simplicity. Once you get into it, you may find that it's the best thing you've read for as long as you can remember. Or, at least that it makes you think in ways you don't while reading other books.
Being brainy continentals, these guys make reference to a store of intellectual history you won't be able to relate to. They namedrop like MCs, and use a highly layered prose that refers to about a dozen things at once. It probably helps if you've heard of Hjelmslev, Bergson, Liebniz and the rest of the counter-canon of Western thought, but don't let it stop you if you haven't.
If you tackle this thick, thorny thing, here's some advice: Don't read this as an assignment, but approach it like a weird painting. Go slowly and enjoy the twists and turns. Read each section twice before proceeding to the next. Enjoy the poetry that D & G employ. Take notes. When you get to the end, go back and reread the first (and maybe second) section.
52 of 56 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
THE LATE French philosopher Gilles Deleuze seemed to provide the answer. "Deleuze talks about the production of space and power relations, and all that appeals very much to architects," says Lynn. According to Lynn, the Deleuze boom started in 1987, with the translation into English of A Thousand Plateaus. Thanks to his singular combination of disdain and reverence for techno-capitalism, Deleuze had an immediate and obvious appeal to today's cyberarchitects. A member of the radical French left, Deleuze viewed the triumph of capitalism as inevitable. In his writing, he is in turn horrified by and admiring of capitalism's raw power and extraordinary fecundity in transforming the world. But capitalism's strength, according to Deleuze, is also its weakness. As it moves toward global dominance, capitalism's inherent instability becomes increasingly susceptible to manipulation. Rather than preaching outright revolution, Deleuze proposes a "micropolitics": the establishment of local zones of freedom that tap the energies of capitalism to create a "war machine" against the "state apparatus."
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe the best book by Deleuze and Guattari
My first major in college was French linguistics almost 50 years ago and wrote my thesis on Marcel Proust. In the mean time, I read almost all the books by Jean-Paul Sartre. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Miki Shima, OMD
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clean
Excellent copy and shipped fast. This is one of the books that I have been waiting to read. clean book.
Published 3 months ago by Sabri Gokmen
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great piece of work
Deleuze and Guattari are, without a doubt, two stars of critical theory. Beyond the substance of the text, the form is something to discuss in and of itself. Highly recommend
Published 4 months ago by kbach
3.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible book of almost everything
A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari's sequel to Anti-Oedipus, is a very long, very strange work that touches on so many different subjects that it can be considered both a... Read more
Published 6 months ago by David Walters
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Thousand Ideas
"A Thousand Plateaus" is one of those great, sprawling books that is alive and squirming with thousands of ideas like Toynbee's "Study of History," let's say, or Peter Sloterdijk's... Read more
Published 12 months ago by John David Ebert
1.0 out of 5 stars
An incohrent tangle of hollow abstractions.
This book astounded me: it appears to be totally detached from real people and their experience. It presents a confused, incoherent tangle of hollow abstractions that sound... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Phil Harry
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprised at 1-star reviews
Wow, I'm surprised at all the moral outrage over this book. I have read this book a number of times and continue returning to it. Read more
Published 15 months ago by J. S. Dempcy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vastly underrated ontology
This book is clever. A productive ontology which integrates evolution into the fabric of philosophy. We are always becoming. Read more
Published on December 2, 2010 by j_
5.0 out of 5 stars
Libertarian classic
Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus" is a wake up call to people who would say it is either "socialism or barbarism" by saying the real choice is between capitalism and... Read more
Published on November 14, 2010 by Donald Hughes
1.0 out of 5 stars
Blue Kool-Aid
There's enough postmodern nonsense in this book to start a cult. Which, sadly, has happened.
D & G's credibility in the universities has been established by ideologues... Read more
D & G's credibility in the universities has been established by ideologues... Read more
Published on May 20, 2009 by Sean K. Robisch
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