[Hjelmslev] used the term matter for the plane of consistency or Body without Organs, in other words, the unformed, unorganized, nonstratified, or destratified body and all its flows: subatomic and submolecular particles, pure intensities, prevital and prephysical free singularities. [TP: 43]
Should we not sing the praise of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire? For in the nineteenth century he developed a grandoise conception of stratification. He said that matter, considered from the standpoint of its greatest divisibility, consists in particles of decreasing size, flows or elastic fluids that "deploy themselves" by radiating through space. Combustion is the process of this escape or infinite division on the plane of consistency. Electrification is the opposite process, constitutive of strata; it is the process whereby similar particles group together to form atoms and molecules, similar molecules to form bigger molecules, and the biggest molecules to form molar aggregates: "the attraction of like by like," as in a double pincer or double articulation. There is no vital matter specific to the organic stratum, matter is the same on all the strata. [TP: 45]