Lines of Flight

Reviews / Votes

[This book] invigoratingly suggests 'another world of possibilities' when it comes to considering the most pressing issues and growing tensions facing us today. * LSE Review of Books * Guattari's final book deftly wields the double-edged blade honed in his prior works, cutting in two directions at once through the grand histories of capitalism. It boldly enlarges the analysis of language into an expanded empiricism that addresses the multiplicity of modes implicit in collective equipment, and zooms in on the historical miniaturization of subjectifying processes. Guattari thus succeeds in showing how media and urbanization function at the heart of capital, while speaking pragmatically to the invention of collective assemblages. Andrew Goffey's translation and introduction beautifully capture both the ambitious sweep and the micropolitical acuity of Guattari's genealogy of Capital. * Thomas Lamarre, James McGill Professor in East Asian Studies and Associate Professor in Communications Studies, McGill University, Canada * Guattari's elaboration of a critical semiotic model, exposing types of 'collective equipment' that fabricate individuals under different historical conditions, enriches our understanding of his analyses of capitalism, revolutionary politics, and the social unconscious. Guattari's lines of flight from the insides of structural Marxism, psychoanalysis and linguistics carry them into unfamiliar territories and acquaint us with marvellous outsides. Written in his idiosyncratic vocabulary, Guattari's restless search for novel 'optional matters' with which to initiate micro-revolutionary changes exhorts us engage in multi-scalar militancy. Reading Guattari without Deleuze is a highly recommended line of flight. * Gary Genosko, Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies, University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Toronto, Canada * Lines of Flight carries the reader on a compelling journey across the full range of the many-dimensioned thinking of one of the 20th-century's most original minds. The key concepts animating Guattari's thought reconstellate around the central question, all the more burning today, of the complex nature of capitalist power and how it may harbor, at the very heart of its own operations, the seeds of possible worlds beyond it. Lines of Flight is essential reading for newcomers to Guattari's work and for experts alike. * Brian Massumi, Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences, University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada *