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Chapter 6, on the “granularity problem,” looks at the way in which the production of large-scale patterns of individual consciousness can often be analyzed in terms of subjectification practices that are tied to political economy.

Chapter 7, “Adding Deleuze to the Mix,” reworks an article for the specialist journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences; it makes the case that Deleuze’s ontology can help with questions about the ontological status of perceptual capacities and exercise, as well as help deal with the realism / idealism debate.

The Introduction has two sections. The first section presents a crisp and clear treatment of Deleuze’s ontology. Careful definition of terms and numerous concrete examples help the reader grasp the theoretical background of the book. The second section of the Introduction exemplifies the theoretical approach by means of a reading of the work of Francisco Varela in terms of “bodies politic."

Chapter 3 returns to the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and brings together the geopolitical focus of the first with the neuro-physiological focus of the second for a fuller account of the multiple supra-subjective (geopolitical), adjunct-subjective (the technical), and the sub-subjective (neuro-physiological) dimensions of the warfare multiplicity.

Chapter 4 develops a Deleuzean-motivated “dynamic interactionist” account of the notion of socially mediated neuroplasticity in Bruce Wexler’s fascinating study, Brain and Culture (2006). The thesis of the chapter is that human reality is to be found in individuation processes that integrate a social-neuro-somatic multiplicity on evolutionary, developmental, and behavioral temporal scales.

Chapter 9 examines the relation of Deleuze’s (bio)panpsychism and the “mind in life” position of Evan Thompson; the “enactive” biology of Varela, Thompson, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and Hans Jonas; and contemporary biological work on the E. coli bacterium.

Chapter 2 focuses on the way modern military training enables the act of killing in combat in a way that can come back to haunt, psycho-physiologically, returning soldiers; the dimensions of the multiplicity here are distance, teamwork, command, and mechanical intermediaries as they intersect the psycho-neuro-physiological makeup of soldiers.

Chapter 8 prepare the ground for, and then plunges into, the relation of Deleuze’s (bio)panpsychism and the “mind in life” position of Evan Thompson (2007); the “enactive” biology of Varela, Thompson, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and Hans Jonas; and some contemporary biological work on the E. coli bacterium.

Chapter 1 looks at historical research on ancient political economy in the Aegean to sketch a geo-hydro-solar-bio-techno-political multiplicity linking solar, water, and wind energy to the warship and merchant ship; the difference in the daily travel capacity of these ships leads the 5th century Athenians to empire.

Chapter 5 examines three situations – discipline and Rational Choice Theory; the Gabriel Giffords assassination attempt; and the affective dimensions of the Occupy movement – in which the effects of consciousness are underpinned, attenuated, or rendered superfluous in the economy of political action.

Chapter 10 is perhaps the most ambitious effort of the book; it relates two key concepts of Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s contemporary classic, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (2003), “unexpressed genetic variation” and “genetic accommodation,” to Deleuze’s notions of the virtual and counter-actualization.