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Assemblage Theory and Affect
156 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 19, 2026
About the author
Ian Buchanan
69 books31 followersBorn in rural Western Australia, Buchanan grew up in the suburbs of Perth. He did his BA and PhD in the English and Comparative Literature program at Murdoch University, graduating in 1995. His PhD dissertation, entitled, "Heterology: Towards a Transcendental Empiricist Approach to Cultural Studies" attempted to fuse the work of de Certeau and Deleuze for the purposes of doing cultural analysis
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 20, 2026
A slender, enjoyable, impressively concise book that aids understanding of key concepts in Deleuze & Guattari's work, including: Affect, Assemblage, Desire, Desiring machines, Body without Organs, Plane of Immanence, Plane of Organization, Schizoanalysis, Becoming. Ian Buchanan's critical writing on Deleuze & Guattari is clear, straightforward, and above all useful: you can actually, in your life, put it to use. In that way, this is exactly the kind of writing on concepts that Deleuze in particular advocated for.
Buchanan addresses the critical role of desire in Deleuze & Guattari's discussion of 'affect,' and in so doing passes through Affect Theory in order to offer critiques in particular of Manuel DeLanda's and Jane Bennett's conceptions of D&G's 'assemblage' concept (insufficiently: assemblages aren't Katamari-Damancy-esque growths, nor are they collections of things and their relations, however many things there are; neither assembling nor assembly). Buchanan models affect as capacitative—a capacity to act—and a function of desire. His intervention in Affect Theory in this regard is to point out that for Deleuze & Guattari, desire is what causes reality—and affect, and assemblages. To apprehend and understand anything, begin by apprehending and understanding desire. His section title "Desire is the cause of reality" is a hall-of-fame sentence. This is section to re-read many times, in a highly re-readable book.
(For the spontaneous production of bodies without organs and the shifting arrangements of desire that generate assemblages, I'm reminded, not without joy, of that wonderful Neil Finn lyric, "When your seven worlds collide / Whenever I am by your side".)
It's still quite rare to find a D&G-focused book that wants to give you something, rather than tell you something—or more tiresomely, sell you an image of its author. Buchanan's purpose here is to carefully illuminate, discuss, and make use of Deleuze & Guattari's actual writings, and to give you the resulting understanding. By the end of "Assemblage Theory and Affect" you'll have a functional and useful understanding of both assemblage and affect, plus other key D&G concepts—his illumination of "Body without Organs" is peerless—which will help you in encounters with Deleuze & Guattari's work, and in your own life. It's hard to write that last part without sounding like pop psychology, but I don't mean it that way, just that Buchanan's steady clarity has the effect of making D&G's concepts more useful—a tremendous achievement.
Buchanan addresses the critical role of desire in Deleuze & Guattari's discussion of 'affect,' and in so doing passes through Affect Theory in order to offer critiques in particular of Manuel DeLanda's and Jane Bennett's conceptions of D&G's 'assemblage' concept (insufficiently: assemblages aren't Katamari-Damancy-esque growths, nor are they collections of things and their relations, however many things there are; neither assembling nor assembly). Buchanan models affect as capacitative—a capacity to act—and a function of desire. His intervention in Affect Theory in this regard is to point out that for Deleuze & Guattari, desire is what causes reality—and affect, and assemblages. To apprehend and understand anything, begin by apprehending and understanding desire. His section title "Desire is the cause of reality" is a hall-of-fame sentence. This is section to re-read many times, in a highly re-readable book.
(For the spontaneous production of bodies without organs and the shifting arrangements of desire that generate assemblages, I'm reminded, not without joy, of that wonderful Neil Finn lyric, "When your seven worlds collide / Whenever I am by your side".)
It's still quite rare to find a D&G-focused book that wants to give you something, rather than tell you something—or more tiresomely, sell you an image of its author. Buchanan's purpose here is to carefully illuminate, discuss, and make use of Deleuze & Guattari's actual writings, and to give you the resulting understanding. By the end of "Assemblage Theory and Affect" you'll have a functional and useful understanding of both assemblage and affect, plus other key D&G concepts—his illumination of "Body without Organs" is peerless—which will help you in encounters with Deleuze & Guattari's work, and in your own life. It's hard to write that last part without sounding like pop psychology, but I don't mean it that way, just that Buchanan's steady clarity has the effect of making D&G's concepts more useful—a tremendous achievement.
May 22, 2026
This is a fantastic book for those interested in better understanding the relationship between the concepts of assemblage and affect in Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy. As with all of Buchanan's works, this comes highly recommended for those new to (and returning to) assemblage theory. Essential reading.
March 3, 2026
Buchanan is a Deleuze/Guattari whisperer
June 29, 2026
Recommend for doubters, haters, confused.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews