Do not meet their own interpretation because they do not act through the government as an assemblage—A government as an assemblage means it is an enduring institutional structure with the power to effect all of its parts—They only act through individual parts which is not acting as an assemblage

The fact that everything is an assemblage does not mean that anything can become one: there are some criteria to ascertain that a certain assemblage is a real and functioning entity and not merely a random aggregate of parts. First, an assemblage has to possess the power to affect its constituent parts.377 The ability to do this functions as the criterion of the assemblage’s reality. In theory, any two – or more – entities can be viewed as belonging to a same assemblage, but only those instances of co-existence which bring about a change in their parts can be considered as really forming an assemblage. For instance, I might concoct a relation between myself, the dark side of the moon and every phonograph record released in June 1958. Clearly, those parts listed are not affected by any super-individual unifying assemblage, however strongly I wished to believe in it. There has to be consistency for the assemblage to remain over time as the parts are able to reproduce the assemblage in repetition or retention. Then again, the assemblage of my university department is very much real, according to the effects it can have on me, my colleagues, my office furniture, my computer, et cetera. The appearance of emergent properties is the second criterion for assemblages.378 To continue the example of a university department, it can bring forth effects that its constituent parts cannot evoke in isolation. Likewise, the department fulfils the third feature of an assemblage, that of redundant causation. A university department is not the “sum” of the histories of its parts. In a way, a significant number of its sub-individual parts are interchangeable, and this is the reason for the power of its continuity through the years. Professors, lecturers, students and administrative staff can come and go, yet the department stays. Yet, the Simondonian point of the relationality of individuation must be brought up as a reminder: the department can, in turn, function as a sub-individual part in another assemblage, such as the university faculty or a certain professional sector.