Assemblage (from French: agencement, “a collection of things which have been gathered together or assembled”) is an ontological framework that provides a bottom-up underlying structure for analyzing social complexity by emphasizing fluidity, exchangeability, and multiple functionalities through entities and their connectivity. Assemblage theory asserts that, within a body, the relationships of component parts are not stable and fixed; rather, they can be displaced and replaced within and among other bodies.

On the one hand an assemblage (for example, an assemblage of the book, A Thousand Plateaus, and a reader) is a ‘machinic assemblage’ of actions, passions and bodies reacting to one another (paper, print, binding, words, feelings and the turning of pages).

On the other, it is a ‘ collective assemblage of enunciation, ‘ (the meaning of the words of the book emerges in terms of the implicit assumptions that occur in the social field about variables in language use.

Both elements of the book-reader assembly produce different results in their interaction with other assemblages

assembly of book and hand tearing out pages to feed a fire or assembly of a reader inserted into esthetic assemblages inspired by the notion of ‘ becoming imperceptible ‘ to create an art work

Deleuze and Guattari deliberately designed A Thousand Plateaus to foster lines of flight in thinking — thought- movements that would creatively evolve in connection with the lines of flight of other thought-movements, producing new ways of thinking rather than territorialising into the recognizable grooves of what ‘passes’ for philosophical thought.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, representations follow already defined patterns; maps seek links or flight lines that are not readily perceptible to the prevailing majority. As such, Deleuze and Guattari wrote their book as such a map, hoping to elicit further maps, rather than interpretations, from their readers.

While Deleuze and Guattari clearly value flight lines that can connect with other lines in creatively productive ways leading to social transformations, they also warns us of their dangers. A flight line can become inefficient, result in regressive transformations, and even become highly rigid. And even if it succeeds in crossing the wall and getting out of the black hole, it may pose the danger of becoming just a line of destruction.