Episode #128 - Gilles Deleuze Pt. 4 - Flows
Gilles Deleuze Pt. 4 - Flows
In this episode, the podcast explores how Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari radically reimagine social theory in A Thousand Plateaus, challenging the rigid, identity-based frameworks that have shaped Western thought for centuries. Instead of analyzing society through fixed categories or grand designs, they introduce the concept of "flows"—dynamic movements of people, capital, ideas, and even waste—that interconnect across all levels of social life. These flows are shaped by "machines," which include individuals, institutions, and systems, all constantly interacting through processes of territorialization and transformation. Using metaphors like rivers and examples such as economic exchanges or immigration patterns, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize that understanding society requires focusing on motion and connection rather than static identities. They argue that identity itself is not foundational but emerges from difference and becoming. Drawing on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, the episode closes by reframing philosophical concepts of being and becoming, laying the groundwork for a more fluid, interconnected, and immanent way of seeing the world.
Further Reading:
Deleuze and Guattari's 'A Thousand Plateaus': A Reader's Guide by Eugene W. Holland (2008)
Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus: A Critical Introduction and Guide by Brent Adkins (2015)
A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity by Manuel DeLanda (2006)
See the full transcript here.
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