A line of flight (French: ligne de fuite)
is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and
used extensively in his work with Félix Guattari.
Translator Brian Massumi notes that in French,
"Fuite covers not only the act of fleeing
or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and
disappearing into the distance (the vanishing
point in a painting is a point de fuite).
It has no relation to flying."In the first
chapter of the second volume of their Capitalism
and Schizophrenia project, A Thousand Plateaus
(1980), the concept is used to define a "rhizome":
Multiplicities are defined by the outside:
by the abstract line, the line of flight or
deterritorialization according to which they
change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.
The plane of consistency (grid) is the outside
of all multiplicities.
The line of flight marks: the reality of a
finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity
effectively fills; the impossibility of a
supplementary dimension, unless the multiplicity
is transformed by the line of flight; the
possibility and necessity of flattening all
of the multiplicities on a single plane of
consistency or exteriority, regardless of
their number of dimensions.
In Manuel De Landa's book Intensive Science
and Virtual Philosophy, the line of flight
is described as an operator which transcends
the actual and ascends to the virtual.
It is used as a synonym with Deleuze's terms
"dark precursor" (from his Difference and
Repetition (1968)), "desiring machine" and
"quasi-cause" (both from the first volume
of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Œdipus
(1972
