In an upland area in the Limousin region of France stretches the vast and sparsely populated Plateau de Millevaches. Nearby lies the village of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, where Deleuze and his wife shared a house, which Fanny had inherited from her father. From the house, when the weather permits it, one can see the plateau. Deleuze wrote most of his books while on holiday in that part of the country, which he described as ‘very soft and powerful’ (Maggiori 2000).
It is apt, therefore, that one of his books, if only by way of something resembling a humorous homage, include a reference to the plateau that harbours a thousand vaches (the etymology of which is entirely disputed). But, as we know, it is in fact more than a reference: ‘plateau’ is a key deleuzo-guattarian concept. To name a book of philosophy after a place, or, better said perhaps, to turn a geographi- cal entity into a philosophical concept is not an innocent gesture. It is a very deliberate one, which treats its ‘chapters’ as if they were geological formations, and the book as a whole as if it were a map that could be read in a variety of ways, and infinitely redrawn. Yet even this ‘as if’ is insuf- ficient: the book is indeed a map or mapping of a land (let us say, the land of philosophical problems) that does not exist ‘out there’, already made, and this in such a way that an acute vision equipped with the necessary tools would be able to trace its contours; it exists even less in the authors’ minds, as a testimony to the richness of their imagination.
Now，我樂于想像，德勒茲在那個人跡罕至的高原旁，聽著清晨的鳥鳴，
