Can Architectural Desire Pulsate? Urban Laws and Rules of New Babylon as a Sympoietic City

What is an Assemblage? Thomas Nail (bio) Introduction The concept of assemblage plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In a 1980 interview with Catherine Clément, Deleuze describes their invention of the concept of the assemblage as the “general logic” at work in A Thousand Plateaus. However, despite its thirty years of influence on political theory, this “general logic of the assemblage” still remains obscured by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari never formalized it as a theory per se, but largely used it ad hoc throughout their work. This fact continues to pose problems for theorists today who wish to deploy something like a theory of assemblages, but also admit, as Manuel DeLanda does, that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage “hardly amounts to a fully fledged theory” (DeLanda 3). This position allows DeLanda to relegate “Deleuzian hermeneutics” to the footnotes and focus on developing his own “neo-assemblage” theory, “not strictly speaking Deleuze’s own” (DeLanda 4). However, for those who want to know what Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory is, DeLanda’s answer is not quite satisfying. Thus in order to render Deleuze and Guattari’s general logic of assemblages more accessible for political theorists today as part of the current special issue of SubStance, this paper develops a formalization of their theory of assemblages invented in A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? The thesis of this paper is that, contra DeLanda, Deleuze and Guattari do in fact have a fully fledged theory of assemblages. At present and to my knowledge, this is the first full-length journal article to focus exclusively on Deleuze and Guattari’s formal theory of assemblages. By concentrating on the structure of the theory apart from any specific kind of assemblage or application of assemblage theory such as linguistic, sociological, biological, or geological, this paper shows, in a relatively brief manner, the core formal operations shared by all kinds of assemblages and to clarify in what precise sense all assemblages are political. Elsewhere I have shown at length how this general logic of assemblages can be used as a method of concrete political analysis,1 but the focus of this paper is to show the theory behind the analysis. In short, this essay does for the concept of the assemblage what Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben did for Foucault in their essay “What is a Dispositif?”: it extracts [End Page 21] from a large body of work the core formal features of its operative methodology or logic. Agencement The English word “assemblage” is the common translation of the French word agencement used by Deleuze and Guattari. This translation has two problems. First, the English word “assemblage” does not mean the same thing as the French word agencement; in fact, the two come from completely different etymological roots. According to Le Robert Collins dictionary, the French word agencement comes from the verb agencer, “to arrange, to lay out, to piece together.” The noun agencement thus means “a construction, an arrangement, or a layout.” On the other hand, the English word “assemblage,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the French word assemblage (a-sahn-blazh), not the French word agencer. The meaning of the English word “assemblage” is “the joining or union of two things” or “a bringing or coming together.” A layout or arrangement is not the same thing as a unity or a simple coming together. Thus the second problem of this translation: the French word assemblage already exists and means the same thing as the English word “assemblage.” According to Le Robert Collins, the French word assemblage means, “to join, to gather, to assemble.” Again, an arrangement or layout is not the same as a joined or unified gathering. The important philosophical takeaway of this translation issue is that English readers of Deleuze and Guattari ought to dissociate their understanding of the English word “assemblage” from the concept of agencement since it will only confuse things. Furthermore, three major consequences follow from this indexical distinction between assemblage and agencement. While an assemblage is a gathering of things together into unities, an agencement is an arrangement or layout of...

Curriculum and Complex Systems Theory

The chapter describes temporary appropriation (TA) as an assemblage product of other assemblages within the urban landscape. It unravels and invites to re-think the nature of TA through assemblage theory. Derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA, 1989) and developed further by Manuel DeLanda (Assemblage theory. Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, UK, 2016), assemblage theory focuses on the relations produced by the components of a whole rather than the components themselves. Thus, the present chapter combines a range of theories to conceptualise TA of the urban landscape as an emerging product of other assemblages such as culture, legal framework and urban design. These approaches are drawn together by illustrating Mexico City Centre as an example of a highly coded city in which these assemblages emerge. A representative sample street was selected as a case-study to analyse TA in relation to the streetscape design through participant observation and image analysis of the visual complexity of the streetscape. The chapter concludes that assemblage theory could be used as a theoretical framework investigating urban-social phenomena. In addition, the study identified the visual complexity of the assemblage of the urban landscape that supports the greater diversity of TA.

Orbited by two moons, ‘White Lady’ and ‘Blue Child,’ Azeroth is a world inhabited by elves, humans, dwarves, goblins, trolls, gnomes, and dragons. It is a world comprised of three main continents, with islands spattered across its dangerous seas. Azeroth’s geography ranges from lush forests with wild fauna, to lonely snow-capped mountains and enchanted cities. This strange universe is the setting for the award-winning online video game, World of Warcraft – home to 11 million subscribers. Beneath this quite extraordinary virtual community lies a complex assemblage of software code and hardware technologies that enable a seamless virtual experience. Defying traditional megaengineering materialities and geographies, such online communities blur the distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘virtuality.’ Taking its cue from this unclear interface, this chapter elaborates on video games as complex assemblages that constantly slide between concrete and imagined geographies. Deploying the conceptual blueprint of ‘assemblage theory’ from Manuel DeLanda, I argue that games such as World of Warcraft are spaces produced by a hybrid assemblage of material and representational components, and that, far from ever being ‘closed,’ are worlds engineered to be in a deliberate and constant state of transformation. The chapter is composed of the following sections. First, it explores the economics of the video game industry, noting the transfer between real and virtual currency. Second, it explores the multiplayer aspect of games through Xbox Live. Third, the chapter takes hold of some of the controversy in the literature surrounding racist, gendered, and violent on-screen representations. Fourth, the ‘military entertainment complex’ is explored through America’s Army. Finally, the main theoretical contribution of the chapter is made, with assemblage theory used to construct an analysis of video games based on the interaction of material, representational, territorializing, deterritorializing, and coding components.

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the sociomaterial complexities of information systems. By applying Gilles Deleuze’s process ontology, called Assemblage Theory (AT), as interpreted and presented by Manuel DeLanda, we examine the case of a new high-tech medical procedure called transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). Complex innovations like TAVI evolve as sociomaterial assemblages whose dynamics are seen as driven by the interaction between various stabilizing and de-stabilizing processes. We argue that AT is a very powerful (process) ontology for researching and theorizing the dynamics of increasingly complex information systems.

Temporary appropriation (TA) is a re-emerging concept which occurs in the urban social landscape as a multidimensional phenomenon. Intended as multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar research, the present paper explores the way in which temporary appropriation could be interpreted as an assemblage product of other assemblages within the urban landscape. It, therefore, seeks to unravel and to re-think the nature of temporary appropriation through interconnected theoretical frameworks such as assemblage theory. Derived from the seminal work of Deleuze and Guattari (1989) and developed further by Manuel DeLanda (2016), assemblage theory focuses on the relations produced by the components of a whole rather than the components themselves. Thus, in the present paper, a diverse range of theories is combined together to conceptualise temporary appropriation as part of the urban landscape and as an emerging product of other assemblages such as culture, legal framework and urban design. These approaches are drawn together by illustrating Mexico City Centre as an example of a highly coded city in which these assemblages emerge. A representative sample street was selected as a case-study to analyse TA in relation to the streetscape design through participant observation and image analysis of the visual complexity of the streetscape. The paper concludes that assemblage theory could be used as a theoretical framework investigating urban-social phenomena. In addition, the study identified the visual complexity of the assemblage of the urban landscape that supports the greater diversity of TA.

This article explores the roles of ‘collaborator’ and ‘participant’ in what might loosely be described as collective art practice. I propose that social roles, including those of artist, participant and collaborator, are altogether more flexible and permeable than conventionally thought. The article begins with Manuel DeLanda’s development of his ‘assemblage theory’ of society and the possibility of considering collaborations as assemblages. I then discuss Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘role adjustments’ in order to discuss the way participants change positions within a project as it is enacted; Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘Habitus’ highlights how participants and collaborators orientate themselves within the social; and finally, Gilles Deleuze’s ‘diagram’ outlines how a theory of collectivity can be multiple. The article argues for a synthesis of participation and collaboration, which allows for a reflexive and performative process of collective practice that produces a collective social space.

Clarifies and systematises the concepts and presuppositions behind the influential new field of assemblage theory Read and download the preface, by series editor Graham Harman, and the Introduction to Assemblage Theory for free now Manuel DeLanda provides the first detailed overview of the assemblage theory found in germ in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. Through a series of case studies DeLanda shows how the concept can be applied to economic, linguistic and military history as well as to metaphysics, science and mathematics. DeLanda then presents the real power of assemblage theory by advancing it beyond its original formulation – allowing for the integration of communities, institutional organisations, cities and urban regions. And he challenges Marxist orthodoxy with a Leftist politics of assemblages. Key Features Critically connects DeLanda with more recent theoretical turns in speculative realism Makes sense of the fragmentary discussions of assemblage theory in the work of Deleuze and Guattari Opens up assemblage theory to sociology, linguistics, military organisations and science so that future researchers can rigorously deploy the concept in their own fields "

This paper engages with Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuze-inspired ‘assemblage theory’ from a perspective sympathetic to Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. It first outlines DeLanda’s proposed new ‘philosophy of society’, focusing on his major works in this vein, and registers some scepticism as to its originality for sociology. It then introduces and responds to DeLanda’s critique of Bourdieu. Rather than simply reject assemblage theory outright, however, I draw on selected insights from DeLanda to push field theory in new directions. More specifically, I conceptualise the interplay of fields and assemblages and use notions of ‘exteriority’ and ‘possibility space’ to help conceive individual plurality of social positioning and its effects for subjectivity and practice.

Although it is widely acknowledged that technology plays an increasing role in our lives, attempts to produce analyses of global politics commensurate with that role frequently fall short, suffering from the twin pitfalls of technological determinism and social constructivism. Assemblage theory offers a way through this aporia by grounding its analysis in an ontology that suspends these categories in favour of an understanding of the dynamic evolutionary systems that cut across them. Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Manuel DeLanda, and Bruno Latour, this contribution will seek to outline the theoretical coordinates and methodological principles of an assemblage theory of technology and underline the ways in which it can enrich our understanding of global politics in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 3 examines the material poetics of relation that contribute to the Juan Luis Martínez-assembled 1970s artist’s book La nueva novela. It is constructed from such diverse parts as: visual maths problems in which, for example, a painting of Rimbaud and a military jacket minus a shoe, a boot and a sock equals suspenders, a spat and a sock; metal fishhooks taped to a page; riddles and circular problems of logic; other people’s poems; musical scores; drawings, for example, of a pipe split in half (titled ‘Meditations on René Magritte’ and dedicated to Foucault); among many other things. This chapter turns to Édouard Glissant’s ‘poetics of relation’ and Manuel DeLanda’s elaboration of ‘assemblage theory’. By bringing together these texts, which both draw from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, this chapter demonstrates poetry’s condition of being is as a ‘multiplicity’, one that, as Martínez says, ‘operate[s] permanently in every direction’. By comparing how the book’s contents work to both bind it together as a whole and unbind it into a near-infinite network of pieces that can and do belong to other assemblages, this chapter makes a case for understanding books and their contents as bound by relations of exteriority.

This article discusses how materialist philosopher Manuel Delanda’s “assemblage theory” could be of use for art studies. I begin by situating what I term art studies in relation to art history and comment on the differences. After a selective presentation of Delanda’s social ontology on assemblages, in turn following A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, I relate his theory to the concept of assemblage, its origin in the eighteenth century as well as its references as an art term from the 1950s. Theoretical assistance from Martin Heidegger and Bruno Latour allows me to specify how the notion of assemblage could be used in connection with art studies focused neither on Art nor History but on artworks, as the first assemblage, followed by other assemblages, connecting with other works, agents and institutions, i.e. social phenomena literally assembled or com-posed. I present five types of assemblages of relevance to art studies as a different way of doing history, as something ongoing and openly unfolding (assisted and assembled by us), thus theoretically immune to being “history” in the sense of over.
 Keywords: art history, art studies, assemblage theory, artwork, Gilles Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda, Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour

The purpose of this article is to introduce Manuel DeLanda’s “assemblage theory” to psychology. Based on a select review of this theory, we argue that DeLanda’s work may allow for new ways of approaching unresolved problems in psychological inquiry, such as the realism–constructivism impasse, and disputes regarding linear and non-linear models of causality. DeLanda’s systematic treatment of the assemblage, using terms familiar to social scientists and analytic philosophers alike, offers a host of novel concepts and methods for the analysis of social, biological, and/or political systems, while also indicating how this analysis may be deployed in innovative social science inquiry. A number of psychologists have recently begun to explore the concept of assemblage. We add to these efforts in the present paper by assessing how DeLanda’s assemblage theory may open up a new “image of the psychological” to guide research and practice.

This article takes up the recent interest in assemblage theory in urban geography and considers the potential for art to contribute to our narrations of urban assemblages. In particular, it uses Chris Ware's recent magnum opus, Building Stories, as not only an account of the urban as an assemblage, but to indicate more broadly the way in which comics might be used to narrate urban assemblages in ways that highlight their multiplicity and plurivocality. The article draws out three themes in its analysis of Building Stories: more-than-human subjects, the various temporalities of the city, and the way memory and narrative are emergent from urban assemblages.

PurposeThe generation of resources is a central issue for the sustainability of companies. The purpose of this paper is to deal with two research questions: “Is decentralized generation of resources a possible way to reach sustainability in modern work life?” and “What prerequisites must be formed by organizations and managers to reach decentralized generation of resources?”Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical basis for this discussion is the complex adaptive systems theory. Three requirements for sustainable decentralized resource production are deduced: worker's autonomy, worker's integration in the organization, and demands on increased fitness. The empirical basis for answering these questions is the study of four different pharmacy‐districts, each with a different organizational solution. Three sources of data are used: interviews with the four pharmacy‐district managers; a questionnaire to all employees, and the balance scorecard of the company.FindingsTwo of the districts may have reached an unbalance on the system level between autonomy and integration. The other two districts have similar scores of medium for both autonomy and feeling of integration. One of the balanced districts has also a manager focusing bottom‐up change processes. This district has both the strongest resource generation and a leading position in increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction and, thus, sustainability.Originality/valueA simple model is formulated based on complex systems theory and tested in real life: decentralized resource generation is one way of obtaining sustainability; co‐existence of both autonomy and integration of employees, combined with a leadership of transformative character, all encourage this. The paper may inspire researchers, managers, consultants and workers to use this new perspective on organizations and sustainability.