Matter, Sense, Stratification. Notes Toward a Diagrammatic Semiotics from Deleuze and Guattari

Abstract

The article examines the role of semiotics in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, focusing on Mille Plateaux and especially the chapter La géologie de la morale. Drawing on Hjelmslev’s formalist linguistics, the authors redefine the semiotic categories of expression and content beyond the linguistic domain, presenting them as principles of stratification across geological, organic, and socio-technical strata. The article demonstrates how the notion of double articulation functions as a morphogenetic principle, enabling an understanding of matter and sense as co-constitutive rather than hierarchically ordered. Building on this framework, the concept of the diagram is introduced as a key tool for grasping the immanent conditions underlying the formation of strata. The discussion highlights how Deleuze and Guattari reconceive semiotics as a creative, processual practice that intervenes in the composition and decomposition of reality, mapping thresholds of stratification while foregrounding heterogeneity.