Only one session from this academic year has been preserved (and only as a fragment), but from subsequent references by Deleuze to the seminar during 1979-80 sessions, we can see what topics were emphasized corresponding to sections in A Thousand Plateaus: from plateau 13, “7000 B.C. – Apparatus of Capture”, the status of man under the State apparatus, the nomads’ role in inventing the war machine, and linkage of war machines’ development in tension with the State apparatus; from plateau 14, “1440 – The Smooth and the Striated”, links between labour and bureaucracy; and from plateau 12, “1227 – Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine”, issues of labour, justice, signs and tools linked to the State apparatus as well as the importance of metallurgy, and also the phenomena of gangs and packs.
Hence, the seminar summarized below allows us to situate many of the important foci of the previous years within the framework metallurgy, specifically, and the nomadic war machine more generally.
