Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 02:03:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Dnyl: "The Nomadology of Anti-States"


The War Machine & Stateless Organisations
or The Nomadology of Anti-States

by Dnyl

http://www.uncarved.demon.co.uk/23texts/warmachine.html

"Indra, the warrior god, is in opposition to Varuna no
less than to Mitra"1 


In their "Treatise on Nomadology" 2, Deleuze and
Guattari present two axioms regarding what they name
the War Machine. Firstly, that "the war machine is
exterior to the State apparatus"; and secondly, that
"the war machine is the invention of the nomads
(insofar as it is exterior to the State apparatus and
distinct from the military institution)".3 

The first axiom is exemplified by the role of the
nomadic warrior in mythology, and also by the various
kinds of 'occupation' of space in war games such as Go
and chess. In the former case, drawing from the work
of George Dumezil on Indo-European mythology, war is
positioned outside the binary poles of violence that
are accessible to the State. Either the state channels
war through its police and jailers, whose operations
are 'magical capture' and seizure, which prevent
combat, or else it acquires an army upon which it
imposes 'juridicial and institutional rules' 4. Thus
the war machine is never reducible to the State
apparatus, but the State constantly appropriates the
war machine to serve its mechanics of violence and
control. In short, the State divests the war machine
of its power of metamorphosis- its nomadicism. It is
worth noting also that the war machine does not have
war as its object, but "necessarily adopts it as its
object when it allows itself to be appropriated by the
State apparatus" 5

In the case of games, the comparison between chess and
Go allows a metaphor for comparing the features of
'State space' and the 'nomadic space' of the war
machine, respectively. In the former case, space is
striated into lines of tension and the closing-off of
regions by pieces endowed with intrinsic powers and
qualities. Chess is a game of interiority. On the
other hand, Go pieces are empowered not by intrinsic
rules but by situational properties. There are no
front lines or battles in Go, which operates within a
'smooth' space.

As to the second axiom, D & G refer to the work of
Pierre Clastres, who proposed that so-called
'primitive societies' are not only societies 'without
a State' 6 , but have (usually complex) mechanisms for
warding off the formation of a State. Further, that
war in primitive societies is the surest mechanism in
preventing the formation of the State. In the words of
D & G, "war maintains the dispersal and segmentarity
of groups, and the warrior himself is caught in a
process of accumulating exploits leading him to
solitude and a prestigious but powerless death". This
organisational form is closer to that of bands and
packs than to the organs of power in any State
apparatus. Leadership is a volatile relation between
pack members, and does not necessarily promote the
strongest but instead inhibits the installation of
stable powers. Thus, instead of an institution of
power structures which pre-exist their occupation,
power is a fabric of immanent relations, constantly
undergoing metamorphosis and threatening the
dispersion of the pack. This cannot be seen simply as
a mere "unevolved" system, but is instead a complex
assemblage of multiple micro-mechanisms that prevent
the formation of power institutions proper to the
State.

Thus, by breaking with the evolutionist's position of
"from bands to kingdoms", a certain self-sufficiency
of the bands is assumed and the emergence of the State
is transferred to entirely different mechanisms 7.

At this point it is necessary to clarify that the war
machine does not have war as its object, but rather as
its means of averting the formation of 'organs of
power'. While the nomads can be accredited with the
invention of the war machine, they cannot be
accredited with its secrets, as any "ideological,
scientific or artistic movement can be a potential war
machine, to the precise extent to which it draws, in
relation to a phylum 8 , a plane of consistency, a
creative line of flight, a smooth space of
displacement. It is not the nomad who defines this
constellation of characteristics; it is this
constellation that defines the nomad, and at the same
time the essence of the war machine" 9.

So one does not create a war machine, one creates in
such a way as to operate as a war machine. And war
only becomes its object when it is directed against
the State apparatuses that appropriate it and make war
its object. The war machine is inherently volatile and
the power relations within it are necessarily
fragmented or distributed- it is this tendency to
rupture that prevents the formation of
power-hierarchies and the State apparatus. The
ruptures and schisms that guarantee the metamorphosis
of the war machine are essential to maintaining the
exteriority of the war machine to the State. And it is
the operation of the State to reterritorialise and
appropriate the war machines that deterritorialise or
escape from it in its attempt to disempower them.
Thus, without the internal ruptures of the war machine
that ensure its nomadic movements, it would inevitably
be conquested by the State apparatus, either by
capture (a police raid) or domination (military
destruction or incorporation). 

Schisms break up the war machine, being an integral
part of it, and thus they ensure the war machine's
continuation. 

Dnyl
05/03/96

Footnotes:
(1) Dumezial, The Destiny of the Warrior, University
of Chicago Press, 1970.
(2) Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Minnesota
Press, 1987. p351
(3) ibid., p351, 380.
(4) Dumezial, in Mitra-Varuna, thus concludes that
Mars-Tiwaz is not a warrior god, but a jurist of war.
(5) D & G, ibid, p513
(6) Orthodox ethnology posits primitive societies as
simplistic societies that, historically, 'evolve' from
nomadic to agricultural societies and, eventually,
form complex power relations which form a State
apparatus. 
(7) So, if the formation of the State is not the
product of war, then it must contain internal
mechanisms that make people voluntarily seek out or
accept subordination to the State apparatus. 
(8) In this context a phylum can be interpreted as a
specific power-institution of the State.
(9) D & G, ibid, p422-423 

===="The world is the natural setting of and field for all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man' or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world and only in the world does he know himself."

— Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com