The general task of the political, then, is a: “patient and meticulous practice of genealogy” (63) modelled by Deleuze according to which, we may limn, and contest: “the quality of the forces present and their affinity with one or other character of the will to power … the dynamic aspects of the interplay between the qualities of will to power and those that supervene on force relations… .” (62-3) It is by virtue of these practices that we “trace the paths upon which things change or become transformed into something else,” (66) that is, orientate ourselves as bodies capable of transformation and contestation. Patton suggests that this is not so much a voluntary application of method as it is a peculiar co-ordination of self to world which drives one more readily toward puzzlement and therefore, toward creativity(19-20). What these ontological facts ask of us depends upon where we are situated when the possibility of change becomes an answer to a problem posed to us which we are not too stupid to notice.
– Karen Houle, Editorial: Deleuze and Politics – a reading of Paul Patton’s Deleuze and the Political – in Volume 12(3) of The Semiotic Review of Books, archived here, p. 4
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