Manuel De Landa - Lectures / Workshops / Seminars

DELEUZE: History and Science. (3 Credits)

Manuel DeLanda

Description: This course aims to introduce students to the materialist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It focuses on questions about ontology and epistemology, leaving aside many subjects that Deleuze also wrote about, such as painting, cinema, and literature. The emphasis of the course is on the material world and the means we use to generate knowledge about it, so the course also leaves out Deleuze's work on meta-philosophy: his writings about other philosophers (Bergson, Nietzsche) as well as his views on what philosophy itself is. The exclusion of these subjects is not meant to diminish their importance but it does point out to a crucial feature of any form of materialism: understanding what the world is and how we get to know it must be prior to any attempt at explaining cultural phenomena. Each class is named after a particular chapter of a book by Deleuze (or of a book with his collaborator Felix Guattari) providing a concrete context for discussion. Students are strongly advised to read these chapters prior to attending the course. Discussion during class will be strictly confined to the subjects in the respective chapters.

Course Schedule




Class 1:




Difference and Repetition. Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible.

This class aims at unpacking the ideas contained in this difficult chapter of Deleuze's most important work. In it, he introduces the basic concepts of his materialism, concepts that shape the content of many of his later works. We will concentrate on the parts of the chapter that deal with three reasoning styles (or explanatory strategies) used in scientific fields that make use of the concepts of difference and repetition to make sense of the production or synthesis of the material world: Intensive thinking, Topological thinking, and Population thinking. Deleuze does not simply take these reasoning styles from science, he changes them and adapts them to play a philosophical role. Indeed, with the possible exception of ecologists, no scientist uses all three reasoning styles at once, so their joint deployment can be seen as the achievement of a philosopher. The philosophical goal is to offer a concept of production without negation, that is, to replace Hegelian dialectics as our main conception of synthesis.

Class 2:

A Thousand Plateaus. November 20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics.

After the introduction of the basic ideas relating to the objective world, the second class returns to the question of our cultural relations to it. The distinction between symbolic culture and material culture is introduced, and the necessary concepts to make this distinction more rigorous are discussed. Then, the idea of a collective assemblage of enunciation is discussed, a joint product of Deleuze and Guattari, forming the core of their theory of language. Unlike Hegelian totalities, in which the components' very identity is generated by their relations (relations of interiority), in an assemblage the components interact with each other to generate a whole that is not reducible to them, but they do not fuse into a seamless totality. That is, they are linked by relations of exteriority. Communities and institutional organizations will be used as examples of collective assemblages of enunciation. Then, the concepts of major language and minor language will be discussed, giving a full historical presentation to complement the relatively few remarks on the history of languages and dialects given in this important chapter.

Class 3:




A Thousand Plateaus. 1837: Of the Refrain.

Returning to the non-human world this class will deal with Deleuze's theory of material expressivity. The chapter on which the class is based is mostly about the birth of a complex form of expression (which we may call a signature) that is already present in territorial animals. With the advent of territorial behavior, materials that are normally part of the circulation of nutrients and energy in an ecosystem, such as urine or feces, are transformed into markers to delineate the borders of a territory and express its ownership by an animal. In other words, materiality becomes expressive. In the most sophisticated animals, birds like the nightingale or the blackbird, their territorial song goes beyond a mere signature to become a style, as the famous classical composer Olivier Messiaen had already argued in the mid-twentieth century. We will extend these ideas in the other direction, to argue that everything, from atoms to stars, also express themselves in a less complex form that we may call a fingerprint. Finally, we will link this important concept with some of the ideas developed in the first class about the virtual dimension of the world (the dimension studied through topological thinking) to argue that everything actual – inorganic, organic, or human – is an expression of the virtual.

Class 4:

Difference and Repetition. The Image of Thought.

The fact that expression is not a human monopoly strongly suggests that there is more continuity between animal and human perception than previously thought. In particular, those schools of philosophy that take as their central thesis that perception is essentially conceptual or linguistic place too rigid a dividing line between humans and animals. Although this dividing line may have originated with Kant, it became more strongly marked when his transcendental concepts were replaced by arbitrary signifiers. Deleuze staked a claim in this debate with his very first book (Empiricism and Subjectivity) in which he sided with Hume against Kant. As is well known, for David Hume language played a secondary role in perception and hence there was more room in his philosophy for the idea of a continuity between animal and human experience. In this class, we will discuss some of the insights that Deleuze extracts from Hume, and will extend them to a realm he never discussed: Artificial Intelligence. We will see that there are two schools of this branch of Cognitive Science – one Kantian, the other Humean – and how the latter can provide us with a concrete technological paradigm of how we can make sense of the world without the use of conceptual representations.




Class 5:




A Thousand Plateaus. 10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals.

At this point in the course we have enough background to summarize Deleuze's materialist view of the world. The chapter this class is based on contains the most comprehensive presentation of such world-view, beginning as it does in the mineral realm of rocks and mountains. The geological concept of a stratum, a slow deposit of sediment hardened into more or less permanent rocky layers, is shown to apply to other areas of reality, including biology and linguistics. Thus, a more general concept, that of the stratification of a portion of reality is elaborated, to illuminate those factors that tend to preserve the identity of mind-independent entities. The complementary concept of destratification is then introduced to allow us to think about those factors that, on the contrary, tend to dismantle the identities of beings to produce becomings, even if after such transformations the end result is yet another being, the product of a restratification. The class ends with a brief discussion of Spinozian ethics – not a morality of good and evil, but an assessment of material mixtures that either enhance or degrade capacities – and how this ethics relates to questions of destratification.

Class 6:

A Thousand Plateaus. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology.

To end the course we return to the world of social processes: military, economic, and political. The armies of the nomads that inhabited Central Asia are contrasted with those created by sedentary peoples around the world. The nomads tended to use fluid cavalry formations of mounted archers, capable of using topographical accidents for ambush and surprise, and of exercising initiative in the battlefield to take advantage of fleeting tactical opportunities. Sedentary cultures, on the other hand, invented the phalanx, a rigid formation of infantry man that was good to hold on to terrain and break cavalry assaults, but that was impossible to control once the order to attack had been given. These two styles of warfare are viewed not as eternal archetypes but as phases (like the liquid and solid phases of water) capable of being transformed into one another. The slow nomadization of Western armies, starting with Napoleon, will be used as an example of this transformation. Deleuze and Guattari go on to argue that similar contrasts (and mutual transformations) can be discerned in many other areas of social life, such as science (Royal v.s. Nomad science). Here we will discuss another example from economics, the distinction between industrial networks based on economies of scale and those based on economies of agglomeration.

Required Readings:

De Landa, Manuel. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, May 2002, 256 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 0826456227. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, ISBN: 0826456235. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory And Social Complexity. Continuum. November 14, 2006. Hardcover, 142 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0826481701. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, 142 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0826491693.Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. MIT Press. 1997. Hardcover, 288 pages, Languag English, ISBN: 0942299310. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Reprint Edition. New York: Zone Books, 2000, 333 pages, Paperback, ISBN: 0942299329. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Duffy, Angelaki. "SchizoMath." in: Angelaki. Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2004.

Evens, Aden. "Math Anxiety." in: Angelaki. Vol. 5, No. 3, December 2000.

Smith, Daniel W. "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Badiou and Deleuze Revisited." in: Southern Journal of Philosophy. Vol. XLI, No. 3, 2003.

Recommended Readings:

De Landa, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. Zone Books. 1991. Hardcover, 280 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0942299760. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, ISBN: 0942299752. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari and Janis Tomlinson (Translator) and Graham Burchell III (Translator). What is Philosophy? Columbia University Press. July 15, 1996. Paperback, 256 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0231079893. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari and Brian Massumi (Translator). A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press. December 1987. Paperback, 610 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0816614024. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Constantin V. Boundas (Editor) and Mark Lester (Translator) and Charles Stivale (Translator). The Logic of Sense. Columbia University Press. July 15, 1990. Paperback, 393 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0231059833. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

THEORIES OF SELF-ORGANIZATION: the Dynamics of Cities. (3 Credits)

Manuel DeLanda

Description: Cities are among the most complex entities that arise from human activity. For some of these cities (Versailles, Washington DC) the process through which they emerge is not hard to grasp because it is planned up to the last detail by a human bureaucracy. Other cities, such as Venice and its labyrinthian system of streets, emerged spontaneously without any central agency making the relevant decisions. But even those cities in which urban structure was the result of a deliberate act of planning, house many processes which, like Venice, represent the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos. This seminar will examine a variety of these processes, from markets to symbiotic nets of small producers, from epidemics of urban diseases to the creation of new languages and urban dialects. It will also explore the interaction between these self-organized phenomena and centrally controlled processes which are the result of human planning.

Objectives: In addition to giving architectural students a more concrete sense of social context, stressing particular urban examples instead of vague generalities such as “society” or “capitalism”, the course aims at introducing students to two important areas of contemporary thought:
The new theories of material self-organization, including nonlinear dynamics and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, that are needed to ground a materialist conception of urban dynamics.
The new historical approaches to urban development, particularly those of Fernand Braudel, in which the physical and biological aspects of urban life are given as much attention as the social and linguistic ones.

Requirements: Students are required to write a 10 page essay on one of the themes discussed during the semester.

Class Schedule

Module One: The Geopolitics of Urban History.

Why not China? Why not Islam? Why did the power of Europe (and its ex-colonies) ended up prevailing in this millennium?. This class explores the historical evidence that the rise of Europe was not fated and necessary, but a contingent achievement that may not have taken place at all. It also examines the role that European cities had in this process. A hypothesis proposed by the historian Fernand Braudel is that a comparison between medieval Western towns, on one hand, and those of Islamic and Chinese towns, on the other, reveals a strikingly different dynamics. While the growth and change of many (though not all) nonwestern towns was fairly linear, Western urban dynamics was characterized by turbulence and self- stimulating processes of different kinds.

Module Two: Capitals and Metropolises.

How should we conceptualize cities?. Where in the continuum between individuals and societies should they be located? This class tackles this question by examining social entities smaller than cities (communities, organizations) as well as larger ones (provinces, nation states). It also introduces a basic typology of urban centers. Cities from ancient times have engaged in two quite different types of activities, one characterized by centralized decision-making, the other by multiple decisions made in a decentralized way. Those functions we associate with the government of cities are of the first type, while those related to trade are of the second type. Some urban centers tend to be dominated by one or another of these types of activities, becoming either the capital or organizing center of a hierarchy of towns, on one hand, or a gateway to foreign markets linked into a transnational network, on the other.

Module Three: Urban Economics 1.

The economic life of any city is vital to its performance and survival, but what concepts do we need to correctly conceptualize it? The notion of “capitalism”, useful as it is to give us a rough idea of economic dynamics, is too vague to model trade, production, and the other areas of urban economics. This class introduces a more detailed analysis of the different types of production systems that have animated urban life in the last few centuries: economies of scale, based on routinized labor and centralized management, and economies of agglomeration, based on distributed networks of small producers and the concentration of skilled labor in either cities or in the industrial hinterlands driven by cities.

Module Four: Urban Economics 2.

This class continues the exploration of economic dynamics with a few case studies. Two industrial hinterlands closely linked to cities, Silicon Valley and Route 128 (one animated by San Francisco, the other by Boston) are examined and their different dynamics contrasted. Then the ideas developed in a contemporary context are used to examine the rest of the millennium. Urbanist Jane Jacobs, for example, has explored the role of import-substitution dynamics in the rise of many of the cities which dominated the economic history of the West.: Venice, Amsterdam, London, New York. Her theories provide historical evidence that economies of agglomeration have played a fundamental role in the transformation of backward cities into dominant centers. Finally, the history of economies of scale is examined to show the role that military organizations (arsenals, armories) played in their rise and eventual domination of urban economics.

Module Five: The Biology of Cities 1.

Urban centers have many different relations with organic entities. First and foremost, towns and cities have always been parasitic on their surrounding countryside for food. As cities develop and outgrow this primary supply zone they reach out to other areas. Some do it through trade, others through colonialism and conquest. Besides food, cities prior to this century also depended on rural areas for their supply of human beings. Not until the 19th. century did urban centers become net producers of people. Before that death rates were always higher than birth rates (at least for the majority of citizens) and most towns depended on a constant stream of rural migrants to grow.

Module Six: The Biology of Cities 2.

Historians have recently begun to explore the history of human diseases and their impact on social institutions, and in these explorations the historical development of specifically urban infectious diseases has played a central role. The tight packing of people and domesticated animals characteristic of dense urban centers creates the conditions for the stabilization of the relation between microorganisms and their hosts, and for the evolution of new variants of those microorganisms. This makes cities into veritable epidemiological laboratories, creating the variants of the diseases (such as small pox or measles) that played a key role in facilitating colonialism.

Module Seven: Cities as Linguistic Laboratories.

Early in the millennium, as urban centers proliferated all over Europe, many current languages began to emerge. Latin, which had been imposed throughout the Continent by Roman rule, had already diverged into many Romance dialects. It was in the context of the acceleration of urbanization after the year 1000 that spelling and writing systems appeared and it was these that gave the vernaculars a more or less permanent identity. This class examines the history of different languages and the role the urban dynamics played in their development.

Module Eight: Cities and Transportation Technologies.

The distinction between maritime metropolises and landlocked capitals was intimately related to the speed of transport: for most of the millennium sea vessels were much faster than land transportation, and everything (money, people, ideas, diseases) moved faster by sea than by land. The viscosity of terrestrial motion was overcame by the steam engine coupled to the locomotive and that led to new urban forms, like the bead- like strings of towns that grew around train stations in the nineteenth century. The internal combustion engine and the spread of the automobile, in turn, gave suburbs the impetus they needed to overcome central cities as the fastest growing settlements by the 1920ʼs.

Module Nine: Fortified Walls and the State of Siege.

For a long time cities were the main target of war. Siege warfare, in turn, gave rise to the profession of the military engineer (and architect) who was concerned not only with the design of the engines of war but also with issues related to the defense of cities, particularly the design of fortified walls. When in 1494 artillery became mobile and more powerful, wall design mutated drastically from a principle of defense through height, to one of defense in depth, involving a complex system of bastions, ditches and low walls. In these century, when offensive technology evolved new ways of delivering destruction (the bomber plane) which made all material obstacles obsolete, walls literally “dematerialized” becoming the electronic curtains of radar.

Module Ten: Symbols and Connections.

Computer simulations may be used to model city life. These new models differ from standard mathematical models in that they are “bottom- up” instead of “top-down”. That is, they do not begin with a small set of equations to capture the dynamics of a city as a whole, but instead begin at the bottom, with a population of decision-making citizens. This class explores two radically different approaches to Artificial Intelligence. (Symbolic and Connectionist AI) and how they can be used to model urban dynamics in a computer.

Required Readings:

Braudel, Fernand. "Chapter Eight: Towns and Cities." in: The Structures of Everyday Life. University of Harper & Row. 1979. Hardcover, 623 pages, Language English, ISBN: B000K1QNPK. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Hohenberg, Paul M. and Lynn Hollen Lees. "Pages 179-290" in: The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1950. Harvard University Press. 1985. Paperback, 416 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0674543610. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Allen, Peter M. "Chapter One: Towards a Science of Complex Systems." in: Cities and Regions as Self-Organizing Systems. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers. 1997. Paperback, 267 pages, Language English, ISBN: 9789056990718. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

McNeill, William H. "Chapter Three: Confluence of Civilized Disease Pools of Eurasia." in: Plagues and Peoples. Penguin Books Ltd. 1979. Paperback, 336 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0140551395. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Crosby, Alfred W. "Pages 295-308." in: Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900. Cambridge University Press. 1986. Paperback, 390 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521336139. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Jacobs, Jane. "Chapter Five." in: The Economy of Cities. Random House. 1970. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 039470584X. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

GILLES DELEUZE: Science and History (3 Credits)

Manuel De Landa

Description: This course explores the connections between Gilles Deleuze and modern science. We place special emphasis on genetic algorithm, history and material sciences. Through a strong focus on mathematics and the virtual, Deleuzes often abstract ideas are returned to the materiality of lived experience and history. We look at space and time to uncover the inner workings of Deleuzian conceptual frameworks. We will focus on materialistic ethics. This course is a way of grounding the philosophy of Deleuze in something other than discursive lines of flight, Delanda grounds Deleuze’s theoretical works.

Objectives: Students shall leave this course with a much more precise and in depth understanding of Deleuzian theory. Through learning to apply Deleuze to the history of natural sciences, society and politics we begin to understand the truly rich nature of Deleuze’s work. This course is a necessary addition to any scholar interested in Deleuze. Delanda provides a unique perspective that shows us the true scholastic and political materialistic ethics of his work. De Landa’s unique and charming teaching style emphasizes a connection with students and an incredibly high expectation of student participation.

Learning Outcomes: At the end of the course students will have a grasp on the mathematical concepts that ground Deleuze’s work. Through intensive readings of the assigned books and articles students will prepare to engage the mathematical concepts that are fundamental to even an elementary grasp on Deleuze’s philosophy. Students are expected to dive into unfamiliar territories. As we work through these concepts students will gain the vocabulary and theoretical landscape necessary to engage Deleuzian scholars and the excess of work surrounding him. Students will use this course as an essential piece in the creation of their research projects.

Required Readings:

De Landa, Manuel. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, May 2002, 256 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 0826456227. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, ISBN: 0826456235. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory And Social Complexity. Continuum. November 14, 2006. Hardcover, 142 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0826481701. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, 142 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0826491693.Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. MIT Press. 1997. Hardcover, 288 pages, Languag English, ISBN: 0942299310. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Reprint Edition. New York: Zone Books, 2000, 333 pages, Paperback, ISBN: 0942299329. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Duffy, Angelaki. "SchizoMath." in: Angelaki. Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2004.

Evens, Aden. "Math Anxiety." in: Angelaki. Vol. 5, No. 3, December 2000.

Smith, Daniel W. "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Badiou and Deleuze Revisited." in: Southern Journal of Philosophy. Vol. XLI, No. 3, 2003.

Recommended Readings:

De Landa, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. Zone Books. 1991. Hardcover, 280 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0942299760. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr. Paperback, ISBN: 0942299752. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari and Janis Tomlinson (Translator) and Graham Burchell III (Translator). What is Philosophy? Columbia University Press. July 15, 1996. Paperback, 256 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0231079893. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari and Brian Massumi (Translator). A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press. December 1987. Paperback, 610 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0816614024. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Deleuze, Gilles and Constantin V. Boundas (Editor) and Mark Lester (Translator) and Charles Stivale (Translator). The Logic of Sense. Columbia University Press. July 15, 1990. Paperback, 393 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0231059833. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.