(en) Britain, Anarchist Federation ORGANISE! #85 - Deleuze
and Guattari An Investment for Combat
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari were a pair of French philosophers who came to
prominence around the uprisings of May 1968. Their experiences of those events led to
their two-volume work 'Capitalism and Schizophrenia', in which they laid out a wealth of
tools for analysing the dynamics of capitalism and the state. They drew upon a massive
array of sources, blending the philosophical concepts of Marx, Freud and Nietzche, with
insights from chaos theory, evolutionary biology, geology and anthropology (amongst many
others). Whilst this variety of sources means there are many different ways to engage with
Deleuze and Guattari's ideas, anarchists will likely be most interested in their emphasis
on creating freedom from all forms of domination, both material and psychological.
Like many of their academic peers of that era, D&G's use of
language was deliberately opaque, which has unfortunately
meant their ideas have mostly remained locked within
academia. I hope this article goes some way to bridging that
gap, by presenting just a handful of their bewildering array
of concepts in more accessible language. Some who are
familiar with D&G may disagree with how I've interpreted
these concepts, but that was always their intention with the
difficult language: they detested the type of 'State philosophy'
that tries to control what is to be considered the truth, and
subsequently used to the benefit of dominant powers.
Instead they saw the task of philosophers as the creation of a
conceptual toolbox that people could draw from, and connect
to their own lives and struggles in their own ways. The deciding
factor was not truthfulness, but usefulness. In a conversation
with Foucault, Deleuze said (paraphrasing Proust): "treat my
book as a pair of glasses directed to the outside; if they don't
suit you, find another pair; I leave it to you to find your own
instrument, which is necessarily an investment for combat."
Before we begin, one basic concept is worth explaining to
help understand D&G. They often talk in terms of 'flows':
flows of money, flows of people, flows of information, flows of
thought, flows of speech, flows of history - even 'flows of shit'.
For them, nothing is static:all of the universe is in constant
flux, albeit at different speeds. From the slow movements of
the earth's crust over millions of years, to the rapid changes in
an explosion. Likewise they apply this idea of flows to social
change, in both the gradual development of social structures
through history, to the rapid changes that come about during
a revolution.
With that in mind, let's see if we can make Deleuze and
Guattari useful for anarchist communism by comparing what
we have to say with their analysis.
Freedom and 'smooth space'
"A state is a machine for controlling people and can
never be anything else." - Introduction to Anarchist
Communism
A key function of the state is what D&G call 'striation': taking
the commons ('smooth space'), where free movement is
possible, and cutting this up into plots with strict borders
('striated space'). When applied to land, this process creates
the possibility of rent by creating discrete areas that can be
owned and traded. Anarchists will be familiar with examples
such as the enclosure of the English commons, the
expropriations by colonial powers across Africa, as well as
modern state land grabs such as those currently underway in
places like China and Ethiopia.
But this 'striation' is not restricted to land. The state is
involved in the striation of other common assets: the smooth
space of the sea is carved into territories, as is the smooth
space of the air. The smooth space of public squares become
privatised and regulated, with certain actions (even certain
people) forbidden. There are more abstract examples, such
as intellectual property, where the smooth space of ideas and
concepts has been striated, and its ownership enforced. And
'net neutrality', the smooth space of the internet, is also under
sustained attack by the state, attempting to divide it up to
allow preferential treatment to the highest bidders. Striation is
one of the ways in which the State clears the way for capitalist
exploitation.
The only smooth space the state can tolerate is where it's
created as a tool in the service of further striation, such as
in maintaining the integrity of state borders. So for example,
how modern states use anti-terror legislation to create a
smooth space of communications surveillance, where state
agents can slip in and out of communication networks without
restriction. Or the smooth space of warfare, where normally
observed 'state sovereignty' is dissolved, and all terrain
becomes subject to violent cleansing.
Striation therefore relates to how movement through spacetime
is constrained or otherwise, whether of human bodies,
capital, information, products, armies; all 'flows'. Anarchism
could be said to seek a world of smooth space, that is, not
just a world without borders, but without coercion in our
movements, thoughts and expressions. D&G apply smooth
space to work in a way similar to an anarchist perspective,
counterposing the striated, coercive 'work' with the smooth,
creative 'free action':
'Where there is no State and no surplus labour there is no
Work-model either. Instead, there is the continuous variation
of free action, passing from speech to action, from a given
action to another, from action to song, from song to speech,
from speech to enterprise, all in a strange chromaticism with
rare peak moments or moments of effort that the outside
observer can only "translate" in terms of work'
We must be careful however, as smooth spaces are not in
and of themselves liberatory. As mentioned, they can be
used directly in the service of the state, such as in warfare.
They can also exist in the cracks of striated spaces, creating
an individual and temporary sense of liberation that doesn't
disturb the social order. The urban explorer constructs a
smooth space in their movement through a city, traversing
the locked, boarded up and hard to reach places. But this
doesn't remove the striations themselves, it merely allows an
individual the thrill of working around them.
Smooth spaces can have a powerful effect however,
particularly when as part of collective action. We might
distinguish the smooth space of a militant protest, that
spontaneously reclaims space from the hands of the state
and spreads out unpredictably, versus the striated space
of the police-sanctioned A-B march. The smooth space of
a non-hierarchical neighbourhood assembly, versus the
striated space of union bureaucracy. Or on a broader scale,
the smooth space of a new society created through direct
democracy, versus the striation of the five year plan.
The State and 'rigid segmentarity'
"Schools, whilst providing an important service, also
indoctrinate children and prepare them for a life as
workers rather than as human beings. Prisons,
immigration authorities, dole offices and on and
on and on, all intrude into our lives and control our
actions. Some of these things, like schools, hospitals
and welfare benefits, we sometimes depend on for
our lives. It is often this very dependence that these
organisations use to control us." - Introduction to
Anarchist Communism
Social space is divided along different types of line: in
dualisms (child/adult, man/woman, this class/that class),
expanding circles (the individual, the couple, the family, the
town, the city) and linear lines (I pass from home, to school,
to army, to work). Each of these ways of division is operative
in all forms of society. But where pre-state societies tended
towards segments which are supple, and interlink in multiple
ways around numerous centres, State societies make these
rigid, and organise them hierarchically around a single centre.
What was a dynamic web of different centres of attraction
becomes a single hierarchical 'resonance chamber' through
which power can flow.
Through this hierarchical chamber, state organs are made to
resonate together with the same neoliberal ideology: schools
and universities acting as factories to produce workers; prisons
used as sources of labour, housing those who fail to adapt
to the harshness of neoliberal society; benefits being given
only on condition of unpaid work; politicians shaping policy
to best help big business, all public services being stripped,
marketised and privatised; the continuity of the interests of
the financial, industrial and military sectors. Ideology is able
to resonate through all these social segments as one.
The more the state interferes with our lives, the more we
as individuals are also made to resonate with these state
organs. We are hailed by the state as individualised legal and
political subjects, supposedly equal under the law, ignoring
the inequality of our social circumstances. We are treated
as customers, eroding the expectation of unconditional civic
rights and replacing them with payment-conditional consumer
rights. We are compelled to dress and act with increasing
homogeneity, with deviation from the ideals of 'smartness'
and 'speaking properly' being a danger to our ability to find
work, even now extending to our conduct on social media.
Families reproduce and normalise hierarchy and the 'work
ethic' in their children. Even relationships are judged in terms
of 'marriage markets' and 'investments'. This level of insidious
social control would be impossible without a system of rigid
segments, arranged to act as a single resonance chamber
through which an ideology could flow.
Domination within the working class: the unconscious 'syntheses'
"[T]he ruling class works hard to divide us against each
other. It does this in two ways, partly through trying to
control ideas and the way we think about ourselves,
and partly through creating small differences in power
and wealth that set working class people against each
other" - Introduction to Anarchist Communism
D&G also aimed to analyse more precisely how capitalism
and the state affect the way we think about ourselves and
others at a subconscious level. For them, 'ideology' was
too vague and deterministic a concept, and needed more
specific elaboration of how State processes like striation and
rigid segmentation affected thought. They refer instead to
three 'syntheses' of the mind. This is how our minds connect
together the chaos of sensations around us, then divide them
into discrete objects, then put together all these separate
objects and understand them in context, against a ground.
These then are the syntheses of connection, disjunction and
conjunction.
Where it becomes politically useful is that D&G add an
ethical dimension: each of these syntheses has a legitimate
and an illegitimate form. In short, the legitimate syntheses of
the mind are partial, inclusive and fluid. The illegitimate are
global, exclusive and rigid. This means that:
We connect legitimately in our awareness of how people,
minds, events, social systems and so on are complex and
contradictory, and made up of an array of unique parts. We
connect illegitimately in our simplification of human and social
complexity, in treating everything and everyone as an already
determined whole object.
This process is constantly active in the media, such as in
the representation of Muslims or asylum seekers, who are
presumed to be explained by that label, rather than being
complex people for whom that is only one constituent
part. It also happens to anarchists, where instead of being
approached as complex human beings for whom 'anarchist'
is only one element, we are instead taken as simple whole
objects that are entirely summed up by that word, and all the
misinformation attached to it.
But we can also be guilty of this ourselves. For example,
seeing people such as Daily Mail readers or UKIP voters
as totally explainable by the label, rather than a complex
blending of parts in their own right. This doesn't mean taking a
woolly liberal perspective of 'everyone's opinion is equal' - it's
about trying to understand why these oppressive positions
come about. By looking at people as a complex array of parts
rather than simple objects explainable by a label, we leave
open space to try to understand the social processes that
have produced them. That way, we stand a better chance
of learning how to counteract the social and psychological
forces that create racism, nationalism and fascism.
We disjoin legitimately in recognising difference and treating
it inclusively. We disjoin illegitimately in tying difference
into strict binaries, and excluding that which doesn't fit. For
example, the distinction between 'man and women' is often
used to exclude and oppress queer, trans and intersex
people. The illegitimate axioms go: 'You are either a man or a
woman, and you remain that way for life ... A man is attracted
to women and a woman to men ... Men dress and act like this,
and women like that ...' In contrast, a legitimate disjunction
accepts that woman and man are two perfectly legitimate
categories, but do not form a restrictive pair. There is space
for a proliferation of further identifiers to understand a person's
sex/gender: trans woman, queer man, non-binary person,
intersex person - who may be heterosexual, homosexual,
bisexual, pansexual, monogamous, polyamorous - who
may dress and act normatively or otherwise. So where the
illegitimate disjunction forms an exclusive pair 'either A or B',
the legitimate use forms an inclusive series 'A and B and C
and D and ...'
We conjoin legitimately in being open to the shifting of
our horizons, to the finding of a new position. We conjoin
illegitimately in always referring back to a rigid and unchanging
ground, which generates segregation. Nationalism is a
perfect example of such an unchanging ideological ground.
After arriving at the idea of 'immigrant', this is placed into
the rigid, pre-determined ground of 'Britain'. It sets up a
segregative 'us vs. them' distinction which is carried through
all judgements. It doesn't matter how open and respectful
think they are, so long as they rely on this rigid ground of the
nation, their compassion will ultimately be overruled by the
desire to protect the state.
But again, we must be careful that anarchist ideas do not
also suffer this. We have to always be ready to hone our
expectations and analytical tools to adapt to a changing world,
and remain open to creating contingent links on this ground.
We can't simply fall back on dogmatic assertions based on
the grounding of classical anarchist thought, and segregate
ourselves from other working class struggle. In other
words, we have to maintain our principles without isolating
ourselves. A successful example has been the London AFed
group finding ways to act within the housing movement. On
the whole it's operated on non-hierarchical principles familiar
to anarchists, but has sometimes required working alongside
people with divergent political views. By maintaining our
autonomy as anarchists but forming contingent, temporary
bonds with others, we've been able to assist in actions like
eviction resistance, we've added an extra voice in arguments
for keeping action at a grassroots level, and allowed us to
create links with and have influence in parts of the movement
we otherwise wouldn't have.
To bring these three syntheses together, we can look at the
idea of 'community'. It can be a difficult term for anarchists:
community in the one sense is where we act against the
State, yet we can't be uncritical of it, as much inter-working
class oppression occurs within communities. So how do
we express what kind of community we want? Using the
three syntheses above, we might say we are for community
based on a complex interweaving of parts, such as real local
links of emotional and material solidarity between people
(legitimate connection). This is in contrast to the way the
word community is often used, which can mean little more
than lots of individuals living close by who don't interact
- community merely presumed by the name. We are for
inclusive community, where all are welcomed in their myriad
differences (legitimate disjunction), rather than a community
which excludes on normative grounds of gender, race,
disability, etc. And we are for stable but flexible community
(legitimate conjunction), where people have a sense of
collective identity but which never excludes on the basis of
'us vs them'. A community which maintains unique character
and tradition but where people have an openness to gradual,
consensual change, always shaping itself to find better ways
of living together.
Revolution and deterritorialisation
"Both the destruction of what exists now and the
construction of something new are part of the
revolution." - Introduction to Anarchist Communism
Finally, something that may be useful for anarchists in thinking
about revolution is D&G's concept of 'de-territorial-isation'.
It's a bit of a cumbersome word, so it's worth breaking down
a bit. It refers to 'territory', but this isn't necessarily a physical
territory: it can also apply to conceptual or social territories.
This might seem odd at first, but we actually use this in
everyday language already. When the Tories came into power
with a majority, people may have said something like: 'We've
entered new territory', implying a new dominant ideology, a
new combination of laws, ideas, statements, practices etc.
So if these are territories, then territorialisation is just any
process which produces these social and material territories.
De-territorialisation therefore refers to processes which
disturb and transform these systems. It gets useful when
D&G set out the different types of deterritorialisation, to
describe different types of system change. Where our usual
contrast of 'reform vs revolution' gives us only one broad
axis of change, deterritorialisation uses two different axes:
absolute vs relative, and positive vs negative.
Absolute and Relative refer to whether we totally break away
from dominant social ideas, or merely create a momentary
rift which is then easily re-absorbed by the State. A relative
change brings to the surface some existing possibilities in the
social system, but an absolute change creates entirely new
possibilities.
Positive and negative doesn't mean 'good and bad', but
rather refer to whether the change acts against the formation
of a dominant power (positive) or if it's a change which
ultimately supports domination (negative).
Combining the two axes gives us four broad types. (Though
it should be stressed that these are fluid types, and whilst
some situations will demonstrate one dominant type, others
can involve a mix)
A negative relative deterritorisalisation means that the
system is upset, a change occurs, but this doesn't go very far
to challenge the system, and if anything it actually strengthens
dominant power. Elections are an example - a period in
which a certain amount of chaos comes into play, but only
so much as the state expects and is completely capable of
recovering from. The State in fact emerges stronger because
of its refreshed 'democratic mandate', and with some weaker
links of the system having been cast off. At the same time, no
processes were in place to work against the reformation
('reterritorialisation') of State power after the election.
A positive relative change on the other hand, does actually
create connections to ward off the creation of domination, but
doesn't in itself present enough of a challenge to the whole
system to create a revolutionary break. Isolationist lifestyle
anarchism tends to fall within this type. It may be positive
by actually working against internal domination through nonhierarchical
relations, and by creating a 'smooth space' that
the state can't appropriate for itself. But it is only a relative
deterritorialisation because ultimately the State-capitalist
system as a whole isn't really that bothered by it. It's a minor
irritation that the State will either attempt to crush, or like
Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen, will allow to continue
existing in isolation, causing no further disturbance to the
capitalist system.
Only absolute change can be revolutionary. This involves a
serious rupture in the social system which the state cannot
absorb. But like the relative axis, there is a negative and
positive type. An example of negative absolute change might
be the kind of militarised insurrectionary revolution which
itself turns tyrannical, failing to stop itself from turning into a
new tool of domination. Authoritarian communist revolutions
would also fall under the negative absolute type: whilst
they may well challenge one current dominant power, they
nonetheless produce an alternative system of domination
through hierarchy and the repression it necessitates.
This is exactly why anarchist communists argue the need for
prefiguration: the creation of institutions and organisations
that can begin to constitute a new society free of domination
prior to a revolution. These organisations would enable a
positive absolute change, by creating connections which
continually act against the reformation of the state or any
other form of dominant power, before, during and after a
period of revolutionary rupture.
There are countless other concepts that could be of use to
anarchists that there's no space to go into here. These will
either have to wait for another time, or else you'll have to
brave the source texts themselves - so check the references
below for some guides and interpretations. Finally, I'll leave
it to Deleuze & Guattari themselves to illustrate the merits of
their philosophy for anarchists:
"A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of
reason. Or it can be thrown through the window."
References
Colebrook - Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed
Deleuze and Guattari - Anti-Oedipus
Deleuze and Guattari - A Thousand Plateaus
(especially chapters 9, 12, 13 and 14)
Holland - Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus:
Introduction to Schizoanalysis
Nail - Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo
Parr - The Deleuze Dictionary
Thoburn - Deleuze, Marx and Politics
