Day 24 Welcome to the War Machine HUM 201 WI 2005

Itinerary Reevaluate wandering after the loss of the subject (emergence, space, and knowledge) Introduce you to Deleuze and Guattari Nomadology 101 Primer on thought as a weapon

Wandering recap Wanderers moved through the world and processed information Wanderers perceived time as changes in space Wanderers couldn’t possess goods while wandering (knowledge moved from possession to exploration and communication)

Wandering and the loss of the subject Wandering no longer an existential state –No longer about how individuals or groups act Wandering now a process or moment in how we recognize the new--nomadism –Destablizes stable constructs –Has its own way of knowing –Produces its own type of space

Deleuze and Guattari Both react against dominant trends in thought-Hegel, Marxism, Psychoanalysis Gilles Deleuze ( ) - trained as a philosopher –How does novelty occur despite the loss of the active subject? Felix Guattari ( )- trained as a psychoanalyst –What new types of subjectivity emerge after the loss of the psychoanalytic subject? Capitalism and Schizophrenia

"We don't claim to have written a madman's book, just a book in which one no longer knows-and there is no reason to know- who exactly is speaking, a doctor, a patient, an untreated patient, a present, past of future patient.... Now, strangely, if we have tried to go beyond this traditional duality, it's precisely because we were writing together. Neither of us was the madman, neither of us was the psychiatrist; there had to be two of us in order to find a process that was not reduced either to the psychiatrist or his madman, or to a madman and his psychiatrist.The process is what we call a flux. Now, once again, the flux is a notion that we wanted to remain ordinary and undefined. This could be a flux of words, ideas, shit, money, it could be a financial mechanism or a schizophrenic machine: it goes beyond all dualities. We dreamed of this book as a flux-book."(from "In Flux" in Chaosophy. By Felix Guattari, Semiotext[e], NY, 1995.)

Nomadology 101 The State –Not states against states but states against all else –Conserve –Makes distinction between governors and governed possible

The War Machine War is not state against state, rather State against disorder (the nomad) –War is the limiting of exchanges –Prevents the state from conserving All relations remain immanent –Felt at the margins of the State but really existing outside –Nomads don’t territorialize--not a migrant

The state in permanent war –State –Example: The Empire of all well ordered capital exchanges The tendency in this system to order the world –War Machine –Example: terrorists and pirates, or, rather that part of terrorism and piracy that destabilizes the State The tendency of things to escape order

Knowledge Nomad Science: One of becoming –Looking for change –Traversing and engendering –No history, just a geography Royal or Imperial Science: One of stasis –Looking for eternal laws –Representing

Space Nomad space: Smooth –Open ended –Space leads to many different directions –Always has the tendency to become something other (De Certeau’s “space”) Imperial Space: Striated –Gridded (De Certeau’s “place”) –Space leads to specific ends –Driven by an anxiety against change Think of maps and the sea

Implications for thought Make thought a war machine –Use research to keep thinking the unthinkable Thought operate from the inability to take form –We think precisely because categories are inadequate Thought as a weapon –Use thinking to help change the world and not protect the status quo