ABSTRACT

This chapter illustrates, along with Curthoys, Deleuze and Guattari, ‘that every mode of thinking, every school of thought, needs to account for the ‘plane of immanence’ upon which it operates’, for it is through this account that a clearer and more workable philosophy emanates (Curthoys 2001: § ‘Deleuze’, Deleuze and Guattari 1994). The ‘plane of immanence’ is the unstructured plane out of which an individual’s or group’s thought and concepts are created. The plane of immanence does not produce concepts that are determined in advance; yet developing a knowledge of the various elements that came into prior-existence to allow for the Formation of any thought or School of Ideas in the first place is possible only by reference to such a plane. ‘Planes of immanence’ contain ‘many voices’; they are ‘composed of speeds and slownesses, movements and rest’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 298). In archaeology today we use the term ‘Reflexive Archaeology’ (Hodder 1999 and Salzman 2002). Reference to ‘places of immanence’ imply that a competent form of Reflexive Archaeology will recognise that ‘conceptual thinking needs to retain a multifarious ‘sense’ of what it is doing, the kinds of problems it addresses and the cultural context it seeks to influence and is influenced by’ (Curthoys 2001: § ‘Deleuze’). In this way, we recognise a reflexivity that, as Hodder describes it, involves ‘recognizing the value of multiple positions, and multivocality (2003: 58)’. Reflexivity is social.