In the previous three chapters, we have focused for the most part on the iconoclastic force of Deleuze's solo authorship prior to his collaboration with Félix Guattari. We drew attention to some of the “theological” aspects of his early works of philosophical portraiture and the two major monographs produced in the late 1960s. As we have seen, Deleuze uses a theological hammer to flatten religious Icons of transcendence, to crack open the chains of the dogmatic image of thought, and to free the actor for an unlimited affirmation of events. This chapter explores his major project with Félix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, which is composed of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, published in French in 1972 and 1980, respectively. This project introduces 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. However, I will concentrate 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.

Once again we are faced with a new, complex, and somewhat strange vocabulary. As we go along, we will notice several points of continuity with Deleuze's earlier work. For example, he remains focused on the inversion of Platonism.