May 8, 1945:

“On the plane of consistency, a body is defined only by a longitude and a latitude: in other words the sum total of the material elements belonging to it under given relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness (longitude); the sum total of the intensive affects it is capable of at a given power or degree of potential (latitude)” (D&G 260).

“What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between field, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies with organs onto a plane of consistency. It is itself a part of the rhizome. The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification” (D&G 12).

The map is the key article used in warfare. The War Machine is separate from the states and operates on many different spaces that coalesce with the invention of the map.  The War Machine operates on the battle field according to lines of flight, plains of consistency, and on both segmented and striated lines.

“Chess is a game of the state, or of the court; the emperor of China played chess. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, nature and confrontation derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pan, a bishop a bishop. […] Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with a relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chass plaer or the game’s for of interiority” (D&G 352).

“Go [ABOVE RIGHT] pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third person function: “It” makes a move. […] Thus the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary’s pieces: their functioning is structural. On the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus of going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The “smooth” space of Go, as against the “striated” space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polis” (D&G 352-3).

Kriegspiel (PICTURED LEFT) operates on the same plane as go. They both posess the ability to operate as strategic element against and outside the state. While Kriegspeil does have set rule and pieces it operates under similar rules of engagement as Go. IN Kriegspiel armies must be able to communiate, out manouvear and surround the enemy. Go functions in a similar manner. In either case, the board represents the smooth space and articulation of a map where the battle takes place. The war machine can exist as a body on a smooth space position by longitude and latitude.

For an example I point to the sinking of the German Battleship Kripitz.

This is the naval map used in the attack on the Kripitz. The Kripitz was a crippling battleship that sailed off the coast of Norway it was sunk from the air by British RAF fighters.

The battle ship was located on a smooth space as a implement of the war machine. It’s presence can also be demonstrated through the map as D&G suggest. The name Kripitz carries a legend with it. The point on the map is the location where it was sunk. The ocean is a smooth space and the objects on it move on a line of flight. The plane that attacked it could also be said to move in a smooth space, but on a striated line. What is the difference between a plane and a ship?

The ship is a chess piece.

The plane is an object on the go board. In this case both are on the same plane of consistency. The same map.

The sinking of the German battleship Kripitz.

“The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go precedes altogether differently, territorializing or deterritorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate, adjacent territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorializing the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing by going elsewhere…)” (D&G 352)

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