Disrupting Sovereignty: Deleuze and Guattari on the War Machine

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-118
Author(s):  
Gavin Rae
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Ontological Difference ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Machine ◽  
Moving Fluid

This chapter engages with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s analysis of the war machine, suggesting that it contradicts Arendt’s analysis and offers the most radical critique within the radical-juridical paradigm. Premised on the notion that we must rethink sovereignty from ontological difference rather than unity, Deleuze and Guattari radically undermine the indivisibility that defines the classic-juridical conception. Far from being located in one individual or point, sovereignty is always tied to the State, which is a multiplicity that expresses the constantly moving, fluid, and dynamic field of difference. By thinking the social world in terms of heterogeneity, Deleuze and Guattari undermine the hierarchical conception of sovereignty underpinning the classic-juridical model, but continue to implicitly insist that State sovereignty is tied to the maintenance of juridical order; an order that is always threatened by or in conflict with the war machine that disrupts it. As a consequence, they conclude that sovereign order is always far more unstable and disordered than it appears to be.

The social uses of the law at a Soweto garbage dump: Reclaiming the law and the state in the informal economy

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Samson
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Uses

The informal economy is typically understood as being outside the law. However, this article develops the concept ‘social uses of the law’ to interrogate how informal workers understand, engage and deploy the law, facilitating the development of more nuanced theorizations of both the informal economy and the law. The article explores how a legal victory over the Johannesburg Council by reclaimers of reusable and recyclable materials at the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto, South Africa shaped their subjectivities and became bound up in struggles between reclaimers at the dump. Engaging with critical legal theory, the author argues that in a social world where most people do not read, understand, or cite court rulings, the ‘social uses of the law’ can be of greater import than the actual judgement. This does not, however, render the state absent, as the assertion that the court sanctioned particular claims and rights is central to the reclaimers’ social uses of the law. Through the social uses of the law, these reclaimers force us to consider how and why the law, one of the cornerstones of state formation, cannot be separated from the informal ways it is understood and deployed. The article concludes by sketching a research agenda that can assist in developing a more relational understanding of the law and the informal economy.

scholarly journals The Nomadic War Machine in Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz and On the Road

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Machine ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Duluoz Legend ◽  
Iconic Figure

This study inquiries into Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz (1968) and On the Road (1957) from the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s nomadic war machine. It shifts from a rigorous scrutiny of Vanity of Duluoz for its general account of the Duluoz legend, Kerouac’s alter ego, to the study of On the Road for its more specific narrative of a certain period in Kerouac’s life. Being an iconic figure of rebellion and non-conformity in capitalist America during the postwar era, Kerouac’s literary works have a certain social and political magnitude that falls within the discourse of deconstructing orthodoxy and dogma. The study elucidates how Kerouac’s characters subvert the social norms and the state’s institutions in order to break free from pre-structured beliefs. The thesis of the article is to corroborate that such non-conformity and insubordination, exemplified in Kerouac’s autobiographical works, align with the nomadic characteristic of Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine. By extension, it aims at presenting Kerouac as the Deleuzeguattarian nomad who creates nomadic characters that deterritorialize post-war America from within.

scholarly journals A literatura de Caio Fernando Abreu como máquina de guerra

Scriptorium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Dhemersson Warly Santos Costa ◽  
Maria Dos Remédios De Brito
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
War Machine ◽  
The World ◽  
The Military

A máquina de guerra é um conceito criado pelos filósofos Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, que não tem relação com o poder bélico de um Estado, mas, sobretudo, é uma potência inventiva, imbricada em um nomadismo, capaz de fissurar as organizações da máquina estatal (sedentária), abalando suas estruturas, escapando dos sistemas dominantes, inventado linhas de fugas. O nômade, inventor da máquina de guerra, cria para si outros modos de habitar no mundo, inventa seu próprio território, vagando por trajetos indefinidos. Nesta perspectiva, a intenção desta proposta é tencionar ressonâncias entre o conceito filosófico de máquina de guerra e a literatura de Caio Fernando Abreu. Parte-se do pressuposto de que a máquina de guerra compõe o elemento (des) arranjador de toda a obra do autor, uma verdadeira máquina literária que explode em linhas de fuga por todos os lados, declarando a guerra dos sexos, dos desejos, das sexualidades, das identidades. *** The Literature of Caio Fernando Abreu as a war machine ***The war machine is a concept created by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who has nothing to do with the military power of a State, but above all, it is an inventive power, imbricated in a nomadism, capable of fissuring the organizations of the machine state (sedentary), shaking its structures, escaping from the dominant systems, invented escape lines. The nomad, inventor of the war machine, creates for himself other ways of inhabiting the world, fashions his own territory, wandering on indefinite paths. The intention of this proposal is to consider resonances between the philosophical concept of war machine and the literature of Caio Fernando Abreu. It is assumed that the war machine composes the element (dis) arranger of all the author’s work, a true literary machine that explodes in lines of escape on all sides, declaring the war of the sexes, the desires, the sexualities, identities.Keywords: war machine; Caio Fernando de Abreu; Deleuze and Guattari; literatura.

scholarly journals The Mountain as Mandala: Kūkai’s Founding of Mt. Kōya

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Bushelle
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Consideration ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Heian Court

This article considers the sociocultural significance of Kūkai’s understanding of Mt. Kōya as a mandala. Locating the context for his formulation of this understanding in his efforts to found Mt. Kōya in the mid-Kōnin era (809–823), it seeks to elucidate its disclosive function. The interpretation is put forward that Kūkai’s mandalic understanding of the mountains disclosed the possibility of a disembedded form of Buddhist life, one in which the human agent is understood to exist outside the social world of the Heian court and the divine cosmos on which it was believed to be grounded. Particular attention is paid to the sociopolitical effects of this disclosure, suggesting specifically that it contributed to the differentiation of religious authority from political power in Japan. To elucidate this process, Kūkai’s founding of Mt. Kōya is situated in a genealogy of monks who founded mountain temples that operated relatively autonomously vis-à-vis the state. Kūkai’s erstwhile collaborator, Saichō, is given special consideration.

scholarly journals TARSKY DISTRICT AND HIS EMPLOYEES IN THE FIRST THIRD OF THE XVIII CENTURY

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-81
Author(s):  
V. D. Puzanov
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Social Group ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Xviii Century ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Town

The article examines the situation of Tara uyezd and service people who lived in the town of Tara in the first third of the 18th century. The research relies on such archival materials as responses of officials of Tara uyezd who completed to Prof. G.F. Miller’s questionnaire, books and tables of Siberian prikaz on the servitors in Siberia, and materials from the Senate fund. The article provides data on the town of Tara and Tara uyezd in the 1730s. Tara had a near-border position. A large Oirat state -Dzungar Khanate - was located to the south of Tara, and noble Oirat nomads collected tribute from the Turkic population of the uyezd. The reforms of Peter I made profound changes in the social world of Siberia. In the first third of the 18th century, the composition of the uyezd’s population was significantly altered. A new social group raznochintsy was formed of the relatives of servitors and clergy, and a large part of Tara’s service people were transferred to the garrison regiments of Siberia and the Orenburg governorate. The conflict between Tara’s horse Cossacks and captain Yakov Cheredov is indicative and important for understanding the service in favor of the state at that time. The Cheredovs were a deep-rooted clan of Russian service people who had lived in Tara since its founding. The Cheredovs held a number of important offices in Tara, and many of them became Boyar scions and nobles. After the 1722 Tara Rebellion, in which the Cheredovs played a significant role, they lost their privileged position and became raznochintsy . The ‘old’ service people who were nobles, Boyar scions and Cossacks remained the main military force in Siberian uyezds after the reforms. However, their dependence on the state increased. New garrison regiments in the region were formed in the 1730s, mostly of ‘old’ service people.

Interview data: a qualified defence against the radical critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social World ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Important Contributor ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Section

This article focuses on what has been referred to as the ‘radical critique’ of interview data, to which Paul Atkinson has been an important contributor. This critique challenges the two main uses of such data in qualitative research, and in other forms of social science: to tap the knowledge of informants; and to draw inferences about the typical beliefs, attitudes, etc. of some group or category of actor to which the informant belongs. I argue that this radical critique relies upon a constructionist attitude towards the social world, and I examine one source of this: the influence of ethnomethodology. However, I suggest that a naturalistic stance can take account of the features of interviews to which the radical critique properly draws attention, without undercutting the normal uses of interview data. I emphasise that this does not obviate the need for careful consideration of how such data are produced, and particularly of the discourse practices involved. I illustrate my argument by briefly examining the opening section of an interview.

Who Rules the Social Control of Protest? Variability in the State-Countermovement Relationship

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Irons
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
State Structure ◽  
Relational Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission ◽  
Multiple Audiences ◽  
Theoretical Insight ◽  
Over Time

Drawing theoretical insight from political sociology's state-society literature and organizational theory's new institutionalism, I examine the case of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and its relationship with the Citizens' Council to illustrate that the state-countermovement relationship can be highly variable-much more so than the existing literature often assumes. As different actors came to occupy positions of power within the state of Mississippi, they responded differently to relevant audiences and affected the degree to which the council could exercise leverage with the commission to control protest. The analysis focuses on how the state-countermovement ties of ideology and funding changed over time, even though membership overlap between the commission board and the council remained relatively constant. Three relational structures-frustrated, aligned, and stifled-are identified and discussed as influencing the degree to which the council could gain leverage in Mississippi's multilevel state structure where multiple audiences mattered.

scholarly journals The Field of Fields. The State According to Pierre Bourdieu

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 010
Author(s):  
Francisco Villacorta Baños
Keyword(s):  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Generic Level ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Collège De France ◽  
Analytical Potential ◽  
The Social ◽  
Level Of Significance

A book published in 2012 included the publication of the lecture course on the State delivered by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France. The course was given at a time when Bourdieu’s work had reached full maturity, and it completed, at the most generic level of significance —in the “geometral of all perspectives”— the analytical potential opened up by the main categories he used to approach the social world: habitus, field and, above all, capital or symbolic power, the true core of uncontested legitimacy and of the omnipresent domination that the state has acquired in the contemporary world.

scholarly journals Pathology: A Diffractive Encounter of Machine/Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 312-321
Author(s):  
Jessica Smartt Gullion
Keyword(s):  
Abdominal Surgery ◽  
Social World ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Journal ◽  
The Creation

I’ve been thinking about poems and about college as rhizomes (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and as diffractive techniques (Barad 2007; Gullion 2018) for thinking about the social world. This project emerged as a way for me to understand my embodied experience of abdominal surgery. I began with the creation of an art journal, and then wrote a poem to accompany the images. I created the images and the text while thinking about my experience of undergoing surgery and diffracting that through Haraway’s (2016) ideas about cybernetics and machine bodies.

scholarly journals Decoding and deterritorialization. Capitalism and state in the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-67
Author(s):  
Piotr Rutkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
Abstract Machines ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
The Relationship

This text aims to present the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the context of the relationship between the state, capitalism, and machines. Due to the multiplicity and rhizomatics that characterize the works of both French philosophers, the author also outlines the basic concepts important from the point of view of the discussed problem, such as abstract machines, devices, segmentation, deterritorialization, coding, axiomatics, rhizoma, micropolitics, and macropolitics. The perspective proposed in the works of Deleuze and Guattari escapes the well-known patterns of analysis in social sciences, which makes them an interesting look at the relationship between the state and capitalism.

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