We begin by calling attention to certain diagrammatic components: a dot or stain (A) stands at the center of a proximate, centripetal ring (B) while anchoring a centrifugal spiral criss-crossed by leaps and linear relations forming their own micro-systems (C). The spiral terminates finally in a blockage (D) mirrored by or contraposed to an indeterminate jettisoning (E). Having designated these abstract components, we may now examine Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptual mapping. They call the stain (A) the “Center or the Signifier; the faciality of the god or despot.” The ring (B) they name the “Temple or Palace, with priests and bureaucrats.” The relations and micro-systems on the spiral (C) are understood to figure the complex dynamics of signification, with signs “referring to other signs on the same circle or on different circles” which transform “signifier into signified, which then reimparts signifier.” Finally, the blockage (D) represents the “expiatory animal; the blocking of the line of flight,” while the escaping impulse (E) marks the “scapegoat, or the negative sign of the line of flight” (all citations from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, trans. Brian Massumi, A Thousand Plateaus).
In short, the diagram pictures the transcendental, all-seeing (or all-interpreting) eye that dominates every semiology, every structuralism, every representational venture, and it navigates an escape from the signifier’s tyranny, an emission and no longer a mere interpretation of signs. Such is the very essence of diagrammatic thinking: “The diagrammatic or abstract machine does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality.”
In this way, diagrammatic thinking constitutes an imperative, a set of imperatives for lived experience as figured in the spiral and, above all, the arrow of flight in the diagram above: “Destratify, open up to a new function, a diagrammatic function. Let consciousness cease to be its own double, and passion the double of one person for another. Make consciousness an experimentation in life, and passion a field of continuous intensities, an emission of particles-signs. Make the body without organs of consciousness and love. Use love and consciousness to abolish subjectification.”
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