Assemblages

Unlike closed organisms, structural systems and fixed identities, assemblages do not have any organizing centre; they are rather networks of connections, always in flux, assembling and reassembling in different ways. Assemblages are thus emergent features of relationships and can only function as they connect with other assemblages in a constant process of becoming. In Deleuze and Guattari’s analytics, an assemblage is defined as a conjunction ‘of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another’ on the level of content, but also as a nexus ‘of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies’ on the level of enunciation (A Thousand Plateaus 88). Thus, assemblages can be physical, psychological, socio-cultural, as well as philosophical and abstract and they allow for the possibility of complex configurations, continuous connections and intense relations.