Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image by Edgar Chaparro

Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a psychoanalyst and political activist were notable figures in French political thought following the Second World War. Deleuze believed much of philosophy consisted of bureaucracy, while Guattari sought to demolish “the hierarchy between doctor and patient” to achieve “collective critique of…power relations” (pp. iv-v). In collaboration with each other, they authored a series titled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, with the first book, Anti-Oedipus, being published in 1972, and the sequel, A Thousand Plateaus, in 1980. By quoting their arguments from the second book, A Thousand Plateaus, Tim Ingold demonstrates the correspondence between form and matter. This correspondence is exemplified by dichotomies of state and nomad science and machine and thing. 

In Chapter 2, Ingold (2013) quotes the “Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine”, the twelfth chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, in which Deleuze and Guattari extend “Simondon’s crusade against hylomorphism” (p. 25). According to Ingold, Deleuze and Guattari critique the hylomorphic model which illustrates form as static and matter as “homogenous’” (p. 25). Ingold extracts excerpts of this chapter to demonstrate the living, evergrowing state of materials. While doing so, however, he excluded Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) greater discussion of “the war machine”–a nebulous opponent that questions superiority and “impedes the formation of the State” (pp. 358, 422). Many attribute the destructive war machine to nonhylomorphic “nomad science”, which seeks to ‘follow…the “singularities” of a matter’, rather than “a form” (p. 372). While Deleuze and Guattari believe that nomadism produces the “smooth”, open space for the war machine’s “vortical…movement”, they also claim it enables radical change (pp. 381, 423). Its dichotomous other, “State science”, is derived from a separated structure of “governors and the governed” and “intellectuals and manual labourers” (p. 369). It remains inseparable to hylomorphism, as it assigns “matter…to content” and “form” to “expression”, keeping the two categories separate (p. 369). Furthermore, it creates a fixed society, grounded in a “constant form” of “reproduction, iteration and reiteration” (p. 372). Conversely, nomad science connects “content and expression”, with both categories combining “form and matter” ; unlike hylomorphism, nomad science produces a spontaneous “intuition in action” (pp. 369, 409). Ingold argues its “artisans” use matter for evolutionary rather than reproductive means (p. 25). Altogether, Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) demonstrate the importance of nonhylomorphic, nomad science; despite its catalysis of State-opposed war machines, its undisciplined, deterritorial nature can lead “to a new earth” (p. 423). 

In the beginning chapters of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari (1972/1983) introduce the concept of desiring-production as a process of making that is the “production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine” (p. 6). Desiring-production is material, social, and political all at once, it continuously creates and connects flows of life, matter, and meaning. To them, desire produces reality itself rather than expressing a lack of, which pertains to Ingold’s view of making as growth and correspondence as forms can arise through interactions between maker and material. Additionally, Deleuze and Guattari also introduce an anti-production concept of the body without organs, which describes the unformed plane of potential that resists organization and structure. However, this concept is not “proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/1983, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the body without organs is not nostalgia for a pure origin, but rather a positive and productive field for potential new connections and forms to emerge. These ideas are echoed throughout Tim Ingold’s Making through the rejection of hylomorphism and his emphasis on form as correspondence as an ongoing negotiation between maker and material. The body without organs is reflective of Ingold’s materials holding their own agency and potential, shaping outcomes through interaction instead of obedience. While both thinkers resist dualisms of form and matter, they also share an ethical stance on care, attentiveness, and openness toward the world through what Foucault promotes as a non-fascist life and what Ingold calls non-instrumental making. Ultimately, Deleuze and Guattari’s theories are effectively embedded in Ingold’s Making, imagining creativity not as domination nor mastery but as a continuous production of worlds through collaboration, responsiveness, and becoming. 

Deleuze and Guattari’s objections of hylomorphism could be compared to Descartes’ concept of mind-body dualism. Similarly to Ingold’s rationalization against objectifying things instead of understanding the entirety of the thing, Descartes separates the functions of the body by looking at comprehensive processing. 

“For example, when I imagine a triangle, not only do I understand it to be a shape enclosed by three lines, but at the same time, with the eye of the mind, I contemplate the three lines as present, and this is what I call imagining” (Descartes, 1641, p. 51)

The mind and body are separate entities. The mind is differentiated from the body by establishing that the mind is a soul which is a “thinking thing” (Descartes, 1641, p. 52). Descartes emphasizes Ingold’s point that humans are not the only “things” (Ingold, 2013, p. 17) that have a soul, yet differentiates that things such as plants and animals have a different kind of soul from humans (Descartes, 1641, xxviii). Humans have an immortal soul that satiates desires outside of basic necessities or nutrients. The body is a vessel of our mind, and even though the two cannot live without the other, there are functions that both entities can do that the other cannot. For example, the mind can think and the body cannot. Though the mind and body are different things, they work in synchronicity. Therefore, they are different but not separate.This concept is contrary to Aristotle’s theory, that form is the correspondence of matter (Metaphysics), without the idea of a soul. Thus, matter is what things are made of, which is contrary to the distinction that Ingold is making, where objects are not only made of matter but have their own metaphysical processes. According to Descartes, hylomorphism’s argument is not applicable to reality because it does not recognize the metaphysical elements of the world. 

Simondon’s original brick-making example in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (2005/2020) was one of the first to establish the developing cracks in Aristotle’s original hylomorphic schema in terms of individuation, which he defines as the process in which a thing becomes distinct from other things, thus influencing Deleuze and Guattari’s later arguments. He states that, in practice, it never truly works as notions of matter and form create a generalization that ignores the constant formation, genesis, and recomposition that occurs in the living world. With brick, the clay–its original form–undergoes changes through the process of pressing, moulding, and firing, which creates instances in which “the form is not united with the material” (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). The difficulty that emerges in the hylomorphic schema is that “it grants [form and matter] an existence prior to the relation that joins them” therefore it cannot indicate “the principle of individuation of the living being”–and hence “the manner in which the form informs the matter is not sufficiently specified” (Simondon, 2005/2020, p. 31). Individuation is an ever-emergent process that cannot be defined in advance, which “the form-receiving passivity posited by hylomorphism” does (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). Here, one sees how Simondon’s original argument begins to influence Deleuze and Guattari and thus Ingold in how hylomorphism is insufficient in comprehending the correspondence between beings, but also things and processes. 

According to Ingold (2013), Deleuze and Guattari further refute the hylomorphic model through the field of metallurgy (p. 25). This is true, as Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) illustrate metallurgic flows as “confluent with nomadism”; metal continuously changes, thus demonstrating the “vital state of matter” that is universally concealed by hylomorphism (p. 404). Furthermore, metallurgy rejects hylomorphism, as it does not consist of distinct chronological stages of growth, but a “deformation or transformation” that “overspills…form” (p. 410).  As a result, Ingold borrows Deleuze and Guattari’s belief that metal changes continuously as it is fired, forged, and quenched (p. 410). Through promoting Deleuze and Guattari’s example, Ingold demonstrates the correspondence of matter and form. Thus, the idea of form and matter as separate from each other is only one side of the coin.

by Bridghet Wood, Emily Shin, Kim Chi Tran, and Xelena Ilon

References

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus. (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1). (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1972).

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol.1) (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980) https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf 

Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on first philosophy. Cambridge University Press. 

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055 
Simondon, G. (2020). Individuation in light of forms and information (T. Adkins, Trans.) University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2005)