Open Systems - Assemblage

The key for me is the notion of the “consistency” or 

“assemblage” (a flexible, open system, what Manuel calls a “meshwork”). 

Traditional systems theory, as well as its cousin cybernetics, was fixated on the 

notion of homeostasis, which measured a system’s ability, via negative feedback 

loops, to return to a set point after environmental shocks. The key point here is 

“stability”: how much of a shock can the system withstand and still return to 

“normal”? An open system, on the other hand, possesses “resilience”: the ability 

to form new patterns and thresholds, either as the result of an environmental 

shock or as the result of endogenous “evolutionary drift”, to use the term of 

Francisco Varela. What’s great about Deleuze and Guattari is that they give us a 

wide-ranging and nuanced ontology with which to think about the difference 

between such systems. And this ontology seems to resonate with the latest 

science. Stuart Kauffman’s latest work in Investigations, in which he talks about 

the expansion of biospheres into “the adjacent possible” seems to me to fit right 

into the DeleuzoGuattarian notion of an open, expanding, creative, multiverse. 

Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation 

with Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and 

Torkild Thanem 

Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and Torkild Thanem 

De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory And Social Complexity. Continuum. November 14, 2006.

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization 

Science (www.tamarajournal.com).