“Thus it is not surprising that the distinction we were seeking was not between assemblages and something else but between two limits of any possible assemblage, in other words between the system of strata and the plane of consistency. We should not forget that the strata rigidify and are organized on the plane of consistency, and that the plane of consistency is at work and is constructed in the strata, in both cases piece by piece, blow by blow, operation by operation. (TP 337, emphasis added)”

This is perhaps the most succinct statement in A Thousand Plateaus of the basic thesis of this guide. Deleuze and Guattari do not see their task as one of sorting assemblages into “good” rhizomatic assemblages and “bad” arborescent assemblages. Rhizome and tree, consistency and organization, change and stasis—all of these oppositions are the two opposed limits of any assemblage. Perceptual semiotics consists in seeing the ways in which different assemblages construct and map out this opposition.

— Deleuze and Guattari's a Thousand Plateaus by Brent Adkins