Mille Plateaux, You Tarzan: a musicology of (an Anthropology of (an Anthropology of A Thousand Plateaus)) I John Rahn Introduction: About TP IN THE BEGINNING, or ostensibly, or literally, itwas erotic. A Thou sand Plateaus ("TP") evolved from the Anti-Oedipus, also by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari ("D&G"), who were writing in 1968, responding to themini-revolution in the streets of Paris which catalyzed explosive growth in French thinking, both on the right (Lacan, Girard) and on the left. It is a left-wing theory against patriarchy, and by exten sion, even against psychic and bodily integration, pro-wschizoanalysis" (Guattari's metier) and in favor of the Body Without Organs. 82 PerspectivesofNew Music Eat roots raw. The notion of the rhizome is everywhere: an underground tubercular system or mat of roots, a non-hierarchical network, is the ideal and paradigm. The chapters inTP may be read in any order. The order inwhich they are numbered and printed cross-cuts the temporal order of the dates each chapter bears (e.g., "November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?"). TP preaches and instantiates a rigorous devotion to the ideal ofmultiplicity, nonhierarchy, transformation, and escape from boundaries at every moment. TP is concerned with subverting amindset oriented around an identity which is unchanging essence, but equally subversive of the patriarchal move towards transcendence. This has political implications ?as it does in the ultra-right and centrist philosopher Plato, who originally set the terms of debate. Given a choice, though, between one or many Platos, D&G would pick a pack of Platos. How does the program of TP, folded (as well as expressed) atmany levels into itswriting and dissed "organization," avoid conflict with its anthropological structuralism? Like the work of Claude Levi-Strauss (e.g., theRaw and theCooked, La Pensee Sauvage), TP proceeds byway of paired and opposed terms: Rhizomes vs. hierarchical trees; Territor ialization vs. Deterritorialization. TP has a quasi-spatial dimensionality as metaphor (immanent n-dimensional "planes of consistency" vs. the n + 1 overview which conceals a motion towards transcendence within itself); Striated vs. Smooth space; Monadology and Nomadology; and so on. However, polarities or pairs are not themselves rhizomatic, presenting another possible conflict.We will explore this issue later on. The poetry of the language of TP is part of itsmessage: things, people, bodies, concepts ooze, slide around, morph into each other, and generally engage in a kind of climax-free erotic play. The rhetoric is strong and persuasive, as well as being pervasively sensuous. It exhorts, preaches, orders us around (more than a hint of S&M), all for our enjoyment. TP is a brilliant and inspiring book that has been very influential, partly because these philosophers are practicing on us and on themselves. Bateson's Ideas In order to analyze the world of the TP in a way that connects with music, we begin with the thinker D&G credit with the concept of "plateau" in their sense, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, whose work influences TP rhizomatically. According toD&G, Bateson Milles Plateaux, You Tarzan 83 uses the term "plateau" to designate something very special: a con tinuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culminating point or external end. Bateson cites Balinese culture as an example. . . . "Some sort of continuing plateau of intensity is substituted for [sexual] climax," war, or a culmination point. It is a regrettable characteristic of the Western mind to relate expressions and actions to exterior or tran scendent ends, instead of evaluating them on a plane of consistency on the basis of their intrinsicvalue.1 The reference inTP is to Bateson's 1949 essay, "Bali: The Value System of a Steady State."2 In it,Bateson is concerned to refine his theoretical concepts of "ethos" and "schismogenesis" for the understanding of cul tures and societies, by studying a counterexample, Bali, which does not fitwell into his previous generalizations. Already in the 1930s, Bateson was thinking in terms amounting to a kind of "systems theory" or "cybernetics" of culture, pre-dating even the von Neumann game theory and "information theory" that Bateson adapts and adopts to some extent once they in turnwere elaborated in the 1940s. In a 1935 article called "Culture...