Abstract Machine

'Waves are vibrations, shifting borderlines inscribed on the plane of consistency as so many abstractions. The abstract machine of the waves. In The Waves, Virginia Woolf - who made all of her life and work a passage, a becoming, all kinds of becomings between ages, sexes, elements, and kingdoms - intermingles seven characters, Bernard, Neville, Louis, Jinny, Rhoda, Suzanne, and Percival. But each of these characters, with his or her name, its individuality, designates a multiplicity (for example, Bernard and the school of fish). Each is simultaneously in this multiplicity and its edge, and crosses over into the others. Percival is like the ultimate multiplicity enveloping the greatest number of dimensions. But he is not yet the plane of consistency. Although Rhoda thinks she sees him rising out from the sea, no, it is not he. "When the white arm rests upon the knee it is a triangle; now it is upright -- a column; now a fountain...Behind it roars the sea. It is beyond our reach." Each advances like a wave, but on the plane of consistency they are a single abstract Wave whose vibration propagates following a line of flight or deterritorialization traversing the entire plane (each chapter of Woolf's novel is preceded by a meditation on an aspect of the waves, on one of their hours, on one of their becomings).'   

-- A Thousand Plateaus