Conceptual Politics and the War-Machine in "Mille Plateaux"

In an interview published at the same time as Mille Plateaux, Deleuze de-
scribed his work with Guattari as "philosophy, nothing but philosophy, in the
traditional sense of the word."' By that he means a quite specific activity of
conceptual creation: to philosophize is to invent new concepts. The understand-
ing of concepts, however, is far from traditional. These are described as singu-
larities, elsewhere as lines or intensities, which react upon the flow of every-
day thought, forming relays between artistic, political, or other practices.
Concepts function in assemblages with non-conceptual modes of thought, form-
ing rhizomes. Underlying this view is an ideal of conceptual thought and a
corresponding choice: the Deleuzian view of concepts implies a commitment
to a certain politics of conceptual form