May 1999
 
 

Outline of Chapter 14, "1440: The Smooth and the Striated" in A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari (1987, U Minn P, Minneapolis).
 

I thought that the best way to present this chapter would be to draw up a table of comparative models between qualities and models of smooth space and striated space. Each example is cited to page. Anything between parentheses are my comments. In the end, as the authors frequently mention, the most "realistic" application of these models are in the mixings and passages between smooth and striated--a further revision of this outline would include a middle passage between each opposition.
 
 
 

Page	Smooth	Page	Striated
474	Nomad space	474	Sedentary space
	Space in which war machine develops		Space instituted by state apparatus
	Constantly tranversed into striated:		Constantly reversed to smooth:
	organizing the desert	475	desert gains and grows
475-77	THE TECHNOLOGICAL MODEL
475	Felt=anti-fabric; entanglement not intertwining. Infinite, open and unlimited in every direction. No top, bottom or center.		A fabric: intertwining of vertical and horizontal elements; perpendicular intersection; fixed/mobile functions; stake and thread; warp and woof. Striated fabric space: delimited on at least one side; top and bottom (tapestry). Weaving=royal science, government as art of give and take, back and forth.
476	Distributes continuous variation.
	Nomadic cloth: felt or wool.
	Indexes clothing/house to smooth space	476	Clothes- and tapestry-fabric annex body/exterior to immobile house
	Crochet (but with center)		Knitting
	Patchwork: the quilt. Infinite, piece-by-piece construction in all directions. No center. A Riemannian space.		Embroidery: central motif, even if extremely complex
	American quilting bee
477	Smooth=amorphous, nonformal
	Quilt: no top or bottom.
	Patchwork quilt	477	Embroidery quilt

477-78	THE MUSICAL MODEL
477	One occupies without counting		One counts in order to occupy
	Non-metric multiplicities		Metric multiplicities
	Susceptible to irregular break where you want to put it.		Susceptible to break defined by standard
	Frequencies distributed statistically without breaks.  No modules: equal statistical distribution=nondirected smooth space; more or less rare or dense (thin or thick)=directed smooth space.		Frequencies distributed in intervals between breaks. Modules: constant and fixed= straight striated space; regularly variable= focalized modular curved striated space, irregularly variable=nonfocalized modular curved striated space.
478	A nomos	478	A logos (e.g. the octave)
	Non-octave-forming scales reproduced through spiraling
	Smooth is continuous variation, continuous development of form		Striated intertwines fixed and variable elements, producing order and succession of distinct forms.
	Fusion of harmony and melody in favor of rhythmic values		Organization (body) of horizontal melodic lines and "stacks" of harmonic registers.
	Act of drawing diagonal across m/h

 
 

478-82	THE MARITIME MODEL
478	Points, lines, surfaces, volumes		Points, lines surfaces, volumes
	Points subordinated to trajectory		Lines/trajectories subordinated to points
	Nomads: dwelling subordinated to journey. Conformity of space of inside and outside igloo/tent/boat.
	Stops and trajectories		Stops and trajectories
	Stop follows from trajectory: interval basis for rhythmic values
	Line is a vector, direction. Smooth space is directional.		Line is dimension, metric determination
	Space contructed by local changes of direction, perhaps inherent to nature of journey, as in nomadic travel between Pacific oceanic archipelagos=directed smooth space.
	Changes of direction brought about by need to access local and temporary vegetation in desert=non-directed smooth space (wandering).
	Filled by events or haecceities		Filled by formed and perceived things
	Space of affects		Space of properties
	Haptic perception		Optical perception
	Materials signal forces, serve as symptoms for them		Forms organize a matter
	Intensive space of distances		Extensive space of measures and properties
	Spatium		Extensio
	Body without Organs		Organism and organization
	Perception based on symptoms and evaluations		Perception based on measure and properties
	Occupied by intensities: wind, noise, forces, sonorous and tactile qualities. Ex. Desert, steppe, ice.
	Creaking of ice; song of sands		Canopied by sky which serves as measure
	The Sea		The Sea: first to be striated
	Nomadic navigation based on wind, noise, color and sound of water		Bearings and the map: stars, sun, latitude, longitude , meridians and parallels.
	1.Portolanos: not generalizable		Locates known and unknown on grid
	2.Indian Ocean straight space		3.Atlantic Ocean curved space.
		480	Sea striated by commercial cities, then by States.
480	Sea reimparts smooth space as in example of submarines: outflanking all gridding. Controlling striated space.		Politically, Sea archetype of striated desert, air, stratosphere.
	Smooth always has greater power of deterritorialization than striated
	Sinister nature of military smooth space, and possibilities of holey space.
481	Surfaces	481	Surfaces
	One distributes oneself in open space: nomos		One allocates in a closed space: logos
	Smooth ground of nomadic animal raiser		Striated land of sedentary cultivator
	Sedentary cultivator participates in the smooth: nomos as outside city, migratory agriculture		Polis and its cultivation
	Ibn Khaldun: badiya		Ibn Khaldun: hadara
	Transhumant cultivator		Town invents agriculture
	Cultivation in nomos-space (would equal "subsistence agriculture" when farmers not dependent on market prices--growing for local consumption)		Agriculture in city-space (would equal market-oriented agriculture, commercial: e.g. truck farms and banana plantations)
			City imparts smooth space
	Smooth and holey within cities: shantytowns: (occupying without counting): hold the street (from Rhizome)		Hold the fort (from Rhizome)
	(Mutual aid networks, self-supporting)		Money, work, housing in city: striations
482	Voyaging Kleist travel	482	Goethe travel
	Anglo-American travel		French travel
	Live smooth in the cities, urban nomadism, Henry Miller (de Certeau on pedestrians)		Live striated in the desert
	Beatniks outside the cities
	Strange voyages in the city and voyages in place: Toynbee's nomads that do not move
	To think is to voyage
	Mode of spatialization, manner of being in/for space: determines smooth/striated qualities of voyage
	Experimental journey (in ignorance, without itinerary or Travel Guide to Must-See Monuments; enjoying being where you're at; not ranking places according to "picturesque" or "backward" qualities)		Educated, memorial, cultural Goethean journey
	Voyaging smoothly: difficult, uncertain becoming

 
 
 

482-88	MATHEMATICAL MODEL
483	Riemannian multiplicity: typology and topology	483	End of dialectics
	Multiplicities (of n): change in quantity leads to change in quality: always resist even indirect striation: anexact yet rigorous		Metrically determined magnitudes: change in quantitative difference does not change quality
	Distances: division always results in change of nature.
	Examples: speed, temperature, intensity (31 degrees F is not the sum of 15 and 16 degrees, nor are 31 and 33 in a series--getting from one to another in a certain medium implies qualitative changes)
	Distances do not have magnitude: they are sets of ordered differences. Example: movement divided into gallop, trot, walk.
	Continuous variation.
	Time as Bergsonian duration		Versus time as metric or magnitudinal multiplicity
	Achilles running/paradox		Homogeneous extension
484	Multiplicity: qualititatve, fusional, continuous	484	Multiplicity: numerical, homogeneous, discrete
	Matter, enveloped in qualitative multiplicity (envelopment or in-folding)		Matter, developed in metric schema drawing it outside itself (Development)
	Bergson following Riemann		Versus Einstein
	Multiplicities: non-metric; qualitative; acentered; rhizomatic; flat; directional; packs; distance; frequency		Multiplicities: metric; extensive; centered; arborescent; numerical; dimensional; masses; magnitude; breaks
	Tribes in the desert; packs metamorphosizing
	Some Numbers; Numbering		Other Numbers; Numbering
	The Unit: exclusively divisible		The Number: exclusively cardinal Numbers making ideal spaces coextensive with matter
	Minor geometry of smooth multiplicities: operational and qualitative		Geometry and arithmetic; geometry and algebra: Major science
	Local operations only; calculation very limited		General translatibility; homogeneous system of location
485	Number distributes itself in smooth space, dividing and changing its nature: ordinal, directional, nomadic, articulated number, the numbering number	485	The numbered number
	Minor science: intuititive, itinerant, sense of/taste for matter, singularity, variation		Major science enriched by minor science
	Riemannian patches of space: amorphous accumulation of vicinities or situations of determinations : pure patchwork		Homogeneous sets of points, lines, surfaces, volumes interchangeable and measurable: Euclidean space
486	Mandelbrot's Fractals; Van Koch's curve; Sierpensky's sponge.	486
487	Brownian motion; turbulence; the sky
488	Non metric or smooth space: line with fractional dimension greater than one, or surface with fractional dimension greater than two.	488	Metric or striated: Any aggregate with whole number of dimensions, and assignable constant directions
	No dimension higher than that which moves through it.: flat multiplicity, line filling plane.
	Space=that which occupies space.
	Accumulation of proximities, each acc. With zone of indiscernibility=becoming.
488-92	THE PHYSICAL MODEL
488			Recap: warf and woof, harmony and melody, longitude and latitude: fixed and variable.
	Smooth=fundamental heterogeneity, the freeing of the line, (free-form jazz), continuous variation.		The more regular the intersection, the tighter the striation=more homogeneous the space. Ideal: limit-form of extreme striation= perfect homogeneity= capacity for reimparting smooth space.
			1. Striate space with parallel gravitational verticals.
			2. Construct center (point) of gravity.
		489	3. Point stays same; rotate verticals perpendicular.
			4. Gravity=universal attraction, biunivocal attraction along straight lines.
			5. Work=force-displacement in certain direction.
			6. Basis for perfect striation: complete gridding of space, creating locations for points.
			State apparatus: vertical of empire, isotropic of city-state.
489	Smooth space: constituted by: minimal angle of declination from vertical; vortex.		Limits of striation: the infinite (large or small); more than two bodies: space escapes limits of its striation: by declination; by the spiral or vortex.
	Vortices and turbulences occupy engendered smooth space.
	Ancient Greek atom subordinated to hydraulics=swells and flows (particle/wave?).
	Archimedean geometry and Democritean physics.		Euclidean geometry and solid/lamellar matter.
490	Physics and geometry of the war machine	490	Physics and geometry of the State apparatus
	Physics of packs, turbulence, catastrophes and epidemics: geometry of war, art of war, machines of war.
	Free action in smooth space		Versus Work in striated space: weight-height; force-displacement.
491	No State, no surplus labor.		Labor-power, abstract labor (applicable to all human work).
	No work-model.		Wage regime has mechanics of force. All action work or "free time." Standard-man and public works.
	Continuous variation of free action: speech-action-action-song-speech-enterprise, in a chromaticism.		Mass production of weapons: construction site and factory: striation of the war machine.
	"They don't know what work is."		Surplus labor; stockpiling.
	"Unsuitability" for work. "Right to laziness."
	Non-State societies that do not striate space, are not stock, do not "work." No wage regime. Law of the nomos: appearance of "anarchy."		Corvée, tribute labor (encomienda and repartimiento).
			Imperial works from any era.
492		492	Modern public works.
	Integrated/integrating world capitalism: "new" smooth space--capital reaches absolute speed (instantaneous, no "friction of distance").		Capitalism: reimparts smooth space at the "end" of striation, beyond its limits: all semiotic systems; striation survives as state pole of capitalism.
	Multinational corporations--deterritorialized flows between points of occupation (accumulation). Constant and variable capital, etc.: But distinction needs to be made between:
	Smooth capital and		Striated capital
492-500	THE AESTHETIC MODEL: NOMAD ART
492	Nomad art's successors: "barbarian," Gothic, modern.		Sedentary or imperial art
	Close-range vision	492	Long-distance vision
	Tactile, haptic space		Optical space
	(eye can "feel": caress as well as survey)
493	Riegl: close vision-haptic space
	First: not see the wheatfield, lose oneself without landmarks.		Then: striation of strata, drawing, the earth, etc.
	Painting done at close range; composers with close-range hearing; writers with short-term memory.		The viewer; the listener; the reader.
	Haptic space of close vision: orientations, landmarks, linkages in continuous variation.		Constancy of orientation; invariance of distance; interlinkeage by immersion in ambient milieu; constitution of central perspective.
	Desert, steppe, icea, sea--local changes, step by step.
	Orientations change according to vegetations, occupation, precipitation. (Points of reference immanent to space)	493	(Points of reference part of model transcending space)
494	Touch a piece of nomad art with one's mind--that is to see it. Mind into a finger.
	Kaleidoscope's relationship to eye.
	No line separates earth from sky, because they are of same substance.
	No: outline, horizon, background, limit, perspective, form, center	494	Outline, horizon, background, limit, perspective, form and center
	Eskimo space; Arab architecture.
	Absolute is local.		Relative global becomes absolute: Encompassing Element: horizon, background needed in order to (foreground).
		495	Desert, sky, sea, Ocean Unlimited made to play role of Encompassing (Environment) in order to surround a center: grounding of the Earth.
			Making Form possible. Casting excess, smooth remainder, into Deep.
			Imperial Space needs the Smooth, but only as the (Beyond, the realm of abominables, a shadow according to the Empire)
495	Celts		Germans
	Goths		Romans
	Hyksos		Egypt
	Hittites		Asia Minor
	Turco-Mongols		China
	Bedouins		Arabs
	Habiru		Hebrews
496	Nomads as intermediaries
		496	Where haptic serves to striate: immobile background, plane, contour.
	Reimparting smooth space: liberating light, modulating color, unlimited site of intersection of planes.
	Abstract line: nomadic, not rectilinear. Wandering		Concrete line: rectilinear or regularly rounded, constant, anxious in the face of all that passes, flows or varies.
			Figurative writing: children forget how to draw.
			Egyptian rectilinear line; Assyrian/Greek organic line; supraphenomenal, encompassing Chinese line--assign concrete principles.
498	Line: delimits nothing, describes no contour, passes between points, deviates from horizontal/vertical/diagonal.		Line: delimits, contours, goes from one point to another.
	Line without outside or inside, form or background, beginning or end.	498	Line describes a figure with inside and outside, form and background, beginning and end (fixed orientation).
	Repetition as power		Symmetry as form
	Machinic breaks and flows, multiplying effect and pursuing infinite movement.		Organic domination of a central point with radiating lines.
	Free action=disjunction decentering, peripheral movement=disjointed polythetism		Symmetrical antithetism
			Striae convert space into form of expression that grids and organizes matter
499	Streaming, spiraling, zigzagging, snaking, feverish line of variation liberating power of life.
	The line escaping geometry: life escaping the organic.
499-500	Smooth space of Go	499-500	Striated space of chess
	Thought space		Ideology