Assembling Theological Machines
Assembling Theological Machines
This chapter explores Deleuze’s major project with Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia,which is composed of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These books introduce a whole new array of ways to theologize with a hammer, such as constructing a body without organs and connecting rhizomic multiplicities on the plane of consistency. Here, however, Shults focuses on Deleuze’s treatment of the territorial, despotic, capitalist and war machines and the relation of these social-machines to desiring-machines. This constellation of concepts provides us with an opportunity to clarify the difference between sacerdotal and iconoclastic theological machines, whose ongoing (dis)assemblage either casts or dispels the priestly curse on desire. Deleuze’s robustly aesthetic ontology helps us understand why we so easily accept our own despotic bundles (fasciculos). Connecting it to insights from the bio-cultural study of religion can help us understand why we also desire our own coalitional binding (religatio) through shared imaginative engagement with supernatural agents.
Keywords: Deleuze, Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, A Thousand Plateaus, The War Machine, Theology
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