A Thousand Plateaus IV, The State Apparatus and the War Machine, Lecture 1, 27 February 1979

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>Only one session from this academic year has been preserved (and only as a fragment), but from subsequent references by Deleuze to the seminar during 1979-80 sessions, we can see what topics were emphasized corresponding to sections in <em>A Thousand Plateaus</em>: from plateau 13, “7000 B.C. – Apparatus of Capture”, the status of man under the State apparatus, the nomads’ role in inventing the war machine, and linkage of war machines’ development in tension with the State apparatus; from plateau 14, “1440 – The Smooth and the Striated”, links between labour and bureaucracy; and from plateau 12, “1227 – Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine”, issues of labour, justice, signs and tools linked to the State apparatus as well as the importance of metallurgy, and also the phenomena of gangs and packs. Hence, the seminar summarized below allows us to situate many of the important foci of the previous years within the framework metallurgy, specifically, and the nomadic war machine more generally.</p>

<p>For this sole session available in this academic year, the WebDeleuze transcript furnishes the title “Metal, Metallurgy, Music, Husserl, Simondon,” linked to earlier comments by Richard Pinhas on the importance of a metal temporality (ATP II.3, May 3, 1977) and here, of metallic synthesis. Having spoken previously of the “process of metallization” linked to smooth and striated space, Pinhas raises a second point regarding two possible technological lines, a crystal type (about which he says Deleuze spoke the year before) with singular powers, and a metal type. Pinhas describes the crystal type as different sorts of filterings in variable musical harmonics while he links to metallic, brass-heavy music to the blacksmith’s metal affect. He suggests also that these two lines collide with a third synthesis producing cosmic, molecularized elements. In response, Deleuze develops his own perspective on brass-heavy music (Berlioz, Wagner) and the blacksmith-music link, with Varèse straddling the brass tradition and electronic music. After referring to Paul Klee’s belief in his work’s links to Mozart’s, Deleuze returns to Varèse’s work on a sound line and links to optical phenomena and metallic syntheses, also recalling myths joining the blacksmith and metallurgy to the musician and music. Deleuze then seeks confirmation of these ideas from Husserl whom Deleuze as confirming the notion of matter in motion, bearer of singularities and traits of expression. Deleuze proposes a work by Simondon (<em>L’Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique</em> (1964, pp. 35-60) in which what is essential occurs between form and matter, between mold and clay, particularly the shift to an equilibrium between the two. Deleuze points to ancient metallurgy to see a straddling of thresholds, metallurgy or metal as consciousness of matter itself, described by Simondon, matter conceptualized as continuous variation.</p>

<p>No recording of this session is available currently. This dataset includes three files: a revised French transcription and new English translation in odt format, and the original French transcript from WebDeleuze. [WebDeleuze was founded by Richard Pinhas -- a student in Deleuze's seminars -- who, with the Deleuze family's support, developed transcripts and translations of many of the seminars.]</p>

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<p>Les Séminaires de Deleuze sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>Voici la seule séance de cette année scolaire qui s’adresse à des questions considérées auparavant – notamment le métal, la métallurgie, et la musique, sujets particulièrement importants pour un intervenant, Richard Pinhas – aussi bien que des discussion de Husserl et Gilbert Simondon.</p>