The aim of this chapter is threefold. First we wish to explicate our understanding of the Deleuzian understanding of ‘the social’. Then we employ our explication in an experimental mapping of the field of social theories by means of a diagram based on two orthogonal axes: a vertical continuum between order and chaos and a horizontal continuum between purity and heterogeneity. The result of this mapping is a mobile perspective on ‘the social’ and on social theories showing a dynamic field of ‘forces’ that strive to push social theories across their pre-established boundaries and to pull them back. Finally we turn to our third aim, which is to reflect on the following question: what happens to critique, when the mobile nomadism of Deleuzian critique seems to be captured by the control society of contemporary capitalism?

We hope that the chapter as a whole will convince the reader of the powers of a Deleuzian approach to transcend the limitations of the various visions of ‘the social’ provided by social theories as well as to plug these visions into each other.

The ‘Society without Organs’, Molar and Molecular Segmentation and Lines of Flight

The body without organs (BwO) is ‘what remains when you take everything away’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 150) from organised, articulated, stratified, functionally integrated bodies with differentiated organs. The BwO is ‘nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0’ (ibid.: 150).