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A Note on Assemblage
Couze Venn
Theory Culture Society 2006; 23; 107
DOI: 10.1177/026327640602300218

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06_assemblage_062573 10/5/06 10:25 am
A Note on Assemblage
Couze Venn
Keywords autopoiesis, becoming, emergence,
multiple determination, structure
T
he concept of assemblage has emerged as
one of a series of new concepts, alongside
those of complexity, chaos, indeterminacy,
fractals, string, turbulence, flow, multiplicity,
emergence and so on, that now form the theoreti-
cal vocabulary for addressing the problem of deter-
mination, of process, and of stability and instability
regarding social phenomena. As with the previous
set of concepts in the social sciences, notably the
notion of structure, they derive from develop-
ments in the natural sciences and mathematics.
Their introduction signals an important shift at the
level of theorization and methodology, opening
analysis to the recognition of the complexity of
cultural and social as well as natural phenomena,
for instance concerning sociality, the living
organism, mind and elementary particles.
Structure in the natural and social sciences
grounds causal determination within a logic of
stability and linear causality. It is a central
epistemological element in the work of the grand
theorists of social science such as Marx,
Durkheim, Weber and Parsons. The notion of
discrete and nomological determination, which
positivism and various forms of structuralism
support, has clear pay-offs from the point of view
of homogenizing and predicting social phenomena,
and thus for the possibility of intervention and
rational governance. However, the limitations of
approaches based on this notion of determination
have been demonstrated in their failure to account
adequately for change, resistance, agency and the
event: that is, the irruption of the unexpected or
unpredictable. The limitations relate also to their
inadequacy from the point of view of co-relating
phenomena across different fields, for example
between the psychic and the social, the affective
and the cognitive, and between matter and form.
The problem for theory is that of thinking struc-
ture as well as multiplicity and indeterminacy
within the same theoretical framework.
The concept of assemblage has appeared in the
wake of these critiques and questions. In the
recent literature it is mostly associated with the
work of Deleuze and Guattari (particularly A
Thousand Plateaus, 1987) and clearly explained
in DeLanda (2002). One can also retrace its
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Page 107
Problematizing Global Knowledge Assemblage 107
emergence by reference to developments in the
physics of small particles, in topology, in molecu-
lar biology and generally in the interface between
the theorization of emergence and becoming (say
in ontogeny and phylogeny), adaptation or
autopoiesis and cybernetic systems (that is, open
systems with feedback), and post-structuralist
mathematics (e.g. chaos, complexity, string). They
all emphasize adaptivity rather than fixity or
essence, the formal properties of the system rather
than the specific instance or individuation, the
spatio-temporal dimension rather than quantities,
co-articulation and compossibility rather than
linear and discrete determination, multilinear time
and the temporality of processes such that emer-
gence and irreversibility are brought to the fore,
for instance in embryonic development (Prigogine
and Stengers, 1984; Bateson, 1980). Deleuze and
Guattari translate these themes into a vocabulary
that re-codes emergence and becoming, namely,
(de/re)-territorialization (in relation to topology),
the machinic (in relation to autopoiesis), multi-
plicity, agencement machinique (in relation to
differentiation, compossibility).
In the light of the foregoing, assemblage can be
seen as a relay concept, linking the problematic of
structure with that of change and far-from-
equilibrium systems. It focuses on process and on
the dynamic character of the inter-relationships
between the heterogeneous elements of the
phenomenon. It recognizes both structurizing and
indeterminate effects: that is, both flow and
turbulence, produced in the interaction of open
systems. It points to complex becoming and
multiple determinations. It is sensitive to time and
temporality in the emergence and mutation of the
phenomenon; it thus directs attention to the
longue dure. Whilst Deleuze and Guattari suggest
desiring machines as exemplar, one could instead
refer to weather formation and the genome, or, for
that matter, to the formation of identity.
Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish
between the level of abstract general theory say,
the mathematics of string, topology and the level
of concrete material and social life, and the
singular or individual entity. For human beings the
meaning of social action and of existence adds a
dimension to analysis that cannot be reduced to or
derived from the general theory. In any case, inter-
mediate concepts are needed for the analysis of
concrete social and natural processes and mechan-
isms. Thus theory itself can be considered as an
06_assemblage_062573 10/5/06 10:25 am
108 Theory, Culture & Society 23(23)
assemblage that operates as specific conceptual
combinatories in addressing specific problems.
The coherence of the particular combinatory
would be grounded in the respect for the general
principles outlined above. Assemblage is one of the
terms that today signals the emergence of a new
episteme that would be transmodern.
References
Bateson, Gregory (1980) Mind and Nature.
London: Fontana.
DeLanda, Manuel (2002) Intensive Science and
Agencement/Assemblage
John Phillips
Keywords arrangement, assemblage, common
notion, Deleuze and Guattari, event, transla-
tion
O
ne of the key problems of global knowledge
concerns the circulation, adoption and
adaptation of concepts in translation. The
English word assemblage is gaining currency in the
humanities and social sciences as a concept of
knowledge, but its uses remain disparate and some-
times imprecise. Two factors contribute to the situ-
ation. First, the concept is normally understood to
be derived from the French word agencement, as
used in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Flix
Guattari (who, furthermore, do not use the French
word assemblage in this way). Tracing the concept
in its philosophical sense back to their texts, one
discovers that it cannot easily be understood except
in connection with the development of a complex
of such concepts. Agencement implies specific
connections with the other concepts. It is, in fact,
the arrangement of these connections that gives the
concepts their sense. For Deleuze and Guattari, a
philosophical concept never operates in isolation
but comes to its sense in connection with other
senses in specific yet creative and often unpre-
dictable ways. This in connection with already
provides something of the sense of agencement, if
one accepts that a concept arises in philosophy as
the connection between a state of affairs and the
statements we can make about it. Agencement desig-
nates the priority of neither the state of affairs nor
the statement but of their connection, which
implies the production of a sense that exceeds them
and of which, transformed, they now form parts.
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Page 108
Virtual Philosophy. London and New York:
Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1988) A
Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi.
London: Continuum.
Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers (1984) Order
out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books.
Couze Venn is Professor of Cultural Theory at
Nottingham Trent University. His latest book is
The Postcolonial Challenge: Towards Alternative
Futures.
Secondly, the translation of agencement by
assemblage can give rise to connotations based on
analogical impressions, which liberate elements of
a vocabulary from the arguments that once helped
form it. One of the earliest attempts to translate
Deleuze and Guattaris use of the term agence-
ment appears in the first published translation, by
Paul Foss and Paul Patton in 1981, of the article
Rhizome. The English term they use, assemblage,
is retained in Brian Massumis later English
version, when Rhizome appears as the Introduc-
tion to A Thousand Plateaus. Since then many
(though by no means all) translators and commen-
tators have agreed, in a loose consensus, to keep
to this early translation of agencement by assem-
blage, while acknowledging that the translation is
not really a good approximation. Agencement is a
common French word with the senses of either
arrangement, fitting or fixing and is used in
French in as many contexts as those words are
used in English: one would speak of the arrange-
ment of parts of a body or machine; one might talk
of fixing (fitting or affixing) two or more parts
together; and one might use the term for both the
act of fixing and the arrangement itself, as in
the fixtures and fittings of a building or shop, or
the parts of a machine.
In contrast, the word assemblage in English
means more or less the same as its actual French
counterpart, assemblage, a word that Deleuze and
Guattari use less often and certainly never in a
philosophical sense. It has a more restrictive range
of uses in English. The French will talk about an
assemblage of different grape varieties or ingredi-
ents in a recipe and its senses cover blending,
collating, gathering and joining. Although it desig-
nates a collection of things in English too (as one