Toward a multiplication of specialized assemblages of territory, authority and rights

Parallax

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 87-94

  Sassen, Saskia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249301262     PISSN: 13534645     EISSN: 1460700X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13534640601094940     Document Type: Review

References (1)

1. I use the concept assemblage in its most descriptive sense. However, several scholars have developed theoretical constructs around this term. Most significant for the purposes of this book is the work of Deleuze and Guattari, for whom 'assemblage' is a contingent ensemble of practices and things that can be differentiated (that is, they are not collections of similar practices and things) and that can be aligned along the axes of territoriality and deterritorialization. More specifically, they posit that particular mixes of technical and administrative practices 'extract and give intelligibility to new spaces by decoding and encoding milieux'. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp.504-5. There are many more elaborations around the concept assemblage, including not surprisingly, among architects and urbanists (vide the journal Assemblages). While I find many of these elaborations extremely important and illuminating, and while some of the assemblages I identify may evince some of these features, my usage is profoundly untheoretical compared to that of the above-cited authors. I simply want the dictionary term. I locate my theorization elsewhere, not on this term.