Tournament: Lewis and Clark | Round: 1 | Opponent: All | Judge: All
Since the emergence of the ‘Rogue State’ life has become abundantly more organized as the ‘Rogue’ allows sources of insecurity to appear in the Global liberal order – This insecurity results in an infrastructure of both surveillance and control of the social body, becoming suspects to insider threats -- Any insider could conduct unauthorized rogue activities at any time.
On the Implications of Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population Lectures for the Analysis¶ and Theorisation of Security in International Relations¶ Julian Reid2010 “The Biopolitics of Development: Life, Welfare, and Unruly Populations” on 9-10 September”
The concept of the ‘rogue state’ has, during the post-Cold War era, become a regularly¶ deployed reference for regimes said to threaten the boundaries of global liberal order. This¶ proliferation of the discourse of roguery from the biological to the social to the international¶ tells us a lot about the increasing complexities of liberal security practices as well as their¶ continuities with the early modern era. It tells us also a lot about the power of their biological¶ imaginaries upon the conceptions of fear and danger which have motivated the development¶ of the security practices of liberal regimes historically, and which are proving definitive of¶ their strategic response to the new threats posed by terrorism.¶ In their responses to terrorism, liberal regimes of the present have made the protection of¶ global architectures of circulation and infrastructure a strategic priority. The conduct of the¶ Global War on Terror has been defined in particular by the development of strategies for the¶ protection of ‘critical infrastructure’. In the US, for example, George W. Bush has provided a¶ series of presidential directives in response to the attacks of September 11 for the¶ development of what is termed a National Infrastructure Protection Plan. The response to the¶ directive is expressed in The National Plan for Research and Development in Support of Critical¶ Infrastructure Protection published by the US Department of Homeland Security in 2004. In¶ Europe, the European Union is pursuing what it terms a European Programme for Critical¶ Infrastructure Protection ‘to enhance European prevention, preparedness and response to¶ terrorist attacks involving critical infrastructures’. The United Nations is seeking meanwhile¶ to identify the critical infrastructure needs of member states globally, as well as continuing to¶ ‘explore ways to facilitate the dissemination of best practices’ with regard to critical¶ infrastructure protection.¶ Intriguingly, the concept of the ‘rogue’ is regularly used to describe the various forms of¶ threat posed to critical infrastructure in the social jurisdications of liberal regimes. Not only¶ rogue states, but non-state ‘rogue actors’ and even pre-individual ‘rogue behaviours’ are¶ increasingly singled out as the sources of insecurity for a global liberal order the welfare of¶ which is conceived in circulatory and infrastructural terms. In the nineteenth century the¶ protection of liberal order from the threats posed by ‘rogues’ involved securing life, as¶ Derrida describes, on ‘the street, in a city, in the urbanity and good conduct of urban life’. In¶ the twenty-first century the ‘paths of circulation’ on which rogues are feared to roam are that¶ much more complex and require that much more insidious methods of protection. The¶ evaluation of threats is said to require ‘detailed analysis in order to detect patterns and¶ anomalies, understanding and modelling of human behaviour, and translation of these¶ sources into threat information’. It is likewise said to require the development of new¶ technologies able to provide ‘analysis of deceptive behaviours, cognitive capabilities, the use¶ This text is not to be quoted, cited or published in any manner. It is to be used solely for the symposium on¶ “The Biopolitics of Development: Life, Welfare, and Unruly Populations” on 9-10 September 2010¶ 6¶ of everyday heuristics’ and ‘the systematic analysis of what people do and where lapses do –¶ and do not – occur’. It requires not just the surveillance and control of the social body as a¶ whole, or of the movements and dispositions of individuals, but rather, techniques which¶ target and seize control of life beneath the molecular thresholds of its biological functioning¶ and existence.¶ While it is a fact that the biological imaginaries of liberal regimes have played a significant¶ role in constituting the types of threat that they face, it is also a fact that the major¶ adversaries of liberal regimes today base their strategies on the deliberate targeting of their¶ circulatory capacities and ‘critical infrastructures’. Groups such as Al-Qaeda are regarded as¶ significant threats precisely because they deliberately target the ‘critical infrastructures’¶ which enable the liberality of these regimes rather than simply the human beings which¶ inhabit them. Indeed, key intelligence sources, such as the FBI, report that Al-Qaeda are¶ making the targeting of critical infrastructures their tactical priority. In Iraq, the insurgency is¶ defined by similar methods involving the targeting of key infrastructure projects.¶ These strategies of protection, implemented by liberal regimes to secure themselves from¶ terrorism, resemble acutely those with which liberal states of the early modern era sought to¶ secure themselves from the threat of sedition. In the 18th century the rationale was that the¶ prevention of sedition required the promotion of internal trade and the general improvement¶ of circulation among the domestic population. As the political influence of liberalism¶ developed from the late eighteenth century onwards, so the task of identifying,¶ strengthening, and securing the hidden infrastructures of societies became an increasingly¶ prevalent goal and practice among governments. This understanding of the sources of¶ security was fast politicised in the development not just of liberal political and philosophical¶ thought, but in the development of the new governmental practices with which states would¶ seek to enhance the resilience of the infrastructures of relations which would become the¶ benchmarks of both their geo- and bio-political power. Government became the art and¶ technique by which life would be tactically distributed and circulated in the ‘network of¶ relations’ comprising the infrastructures of liberalising societies.¶ The liberal conception of society as an organism comprising networks and infrastructures of¶ relations gathered apace throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in¶ the prevailing conception of a networked world society held together and empowered¶ economically, social, politically, and militarily by the density of its critical infrastructures.¶ Likewise the principle that the regimes which govern such societies are vulnerable on¶ account of their reliance on the vitality of those networked infrastructures, the principle¶ governing Al-Qaeda’s strategy, developed simultaneously within liberal regimes themselves.¶ This was evident not least in the development of the practice of interstate warfare. The¶ increasing investment in the strategic value of airpower in the UK, the US, and France¶ during the twentieth century worked on the assumption that enemies could be defeated by¶ inflicting critical damage on the infrastructures on which their security depended. Today we¶ see the same logic being applied not just within the domain of liberal regimes themselves,¶ but in the violent intervention and enforced reconstruction of illiberal states and societies.¶ The solution to Terror is presumed to lie in the destruction of illiberal regimes, in the¶ This text is not to be quoted, cited or published in any manner. It is to be used solely for the symposium on¶ “The Biopolitics of Development: Life, Welfare, and Unruly Populations” on 9-10 September 2010¶ 7¶ regeneration of their socio-economic infrastructures of circulation, with a view to reinserting¶ them into the networks of exchange and flows which constitute the global liberal polity.¶ This is especially true of the strategies which are currently and errantly being applied to the¶ so-called rogue states of Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO, for example, once a military alliance¶ to protect Western European states from the geopolitical threat of the former Soviet Union, is¶ currently engaged in a strategy which stands and falls on their ability to convince Afghanis¶ to give up their reliance on poppy seed for an economy centred on the production of grain.¶ The irony of this will not be lost on the reader of Security, Territory, Population. For such¶ military strategies of the liberal present depend on precisely the same assumption that¶ classical liberal strategies against sedition depended in the historical eras which Foucault¶ analysed. That is the assumption that historically constituted peoples can be politically¶ suborned and transformed into the utile stuff of population in accordance with the needs¶ and interests of governmental regimes seeking security from those selfsame peoples.¶ The continued development and application of technologies and techniques for¶ infrastructure protection within liberal regimes reduces our lives within established regimes¶ of liberal governance to a similarly logistical calculus of evaluation. In engineering the means¶ with which to secure the infrastructures on which liberal regimes depend against the¶ ‘deceptions’, ‘rogues’ and ‘insider threats’ aimed at it, human life is reduced to what I call in¶ my book The Biopolitics of the War on Terror, ‘logistical life’. Indeed, under conditions of liberal¶ governance, each and every human individual is at risk of subjection to the new techniques¶ and technologies of control and surveillance being developed in the name of critical¶ infrastructure protection. ‘Anyone can be’ the US National Plan for Critical Infrastructure¶ Protection informs its readership, ‘presumed to be a candidate for insider threat’. And¶ indeed everyone is the candidate of this form of threat. Research and development in¶ response to the fear of ‘deceptions’, ‘rogues’ and ‘insider threats’ is aimed at the creation of¶ what is called a ‘Common Operating Picture for Critical Infrastructure’ or ‘COP’ for short, in¶ order to ‘sense rogue behaviour’ not simply in pre-identified sources of threats but in order¶ to be able to ‘sense rogue behaviour in a trusted resource or anticipate that they may be a¶ candidate threat’. As such it is deemed necessary ‘that we presume any insider could¶ conduct unauthorized or rogue activities’. Consequently, the movement of human beings,¶ each and every possible human disposition and expression, of each and every human¶ individual subject to liberal governance, is becoming the object of strategies for critical¶ infrastructure protection. In this context any action or thought that borders on abnormality is¶ likely to be targeted as a potential source of threat. As the Plan states, ‘the same anticipation¶ of overt damaging action by a purposeful threat can be used to anticipate an unfortunate¶ excursion in thought or action by a well-meaning actor’.
Consciousness doesn’t play fair as a result we all have our own perceptions and we are all the rulers of our own flesh and creations, our actions are justified by fiat and our relations are shaped by treaties with other autarchs
“¶ T. A. Z.¶ ¶ The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism¶ ¶ By Hakim Bey 1991¶ ¶ THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE”
http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html
¶ BLACK CROWN and BLACK ROSE¶ Anarcho-Monarchism and Anarcho-Mysticism¶ ¶ IN SLEEP WE DREAM of only two forms of government--anarchy and monarchy. Primordial root consciousness understands no politics and never plays fair. A democratic dream? a socialist dream? Impossible.¶ Whether my REMs bring verdical near-prophetic visions or mere Viennese wish-fulfillment, only kings and wild people populate my night. Monads and nomads.¶ ¶ Pallid day (when nothing shines by its own light) slinks and insinuates and suggests that we compromise with a sad and lackluster reality. But in dream we are never ruled except by love or sorcery, which are the skills of chaotes and sultans.¶ ¶ Among a people who cannot create or play, but can only work, artists also know no choice but anarchy and monarchy. Like the dreamer, they must possess and do possess their own perceptions, and for this they must sacrifice the merely social to a "tyrannical Muse." Art dies when treated "fairly." It must enjoy a caveman's wildness or else have its mouth filled with gold by some prince. Bureaucrats and sales personnel poison it, professors chew it up, and philosophers spit it out. Art is a kind of byzantine barbarity fit only for nobles and heathens. If you had known the sweetness of life as a poet in the reign of some venal, corrupt, decadent, ineffective and ridiculous Pasha or Emir, some Qajar shah, some King Farouk, some Queen of Persia, you would know that this is what every anarchist must want. How they loved poems and paintings, those dead luxurious fools, how they absorbed all roses and cool breezes, tulips and lutes! Hate their cruelty and caprice, yes--but at least they were human. The bureaucrats, however, who smear the walls of the mind with odorless filth--so kind, so gemutlich--who pollute the inner air with numbness--they're not even worthy of hate. They scarcely exist outside the bloodless Ideas they serve.¶ ¶ And besides: the dreamer, the artist, the anarchist--do they not share some tinge of cruel caprice with the most outrageous of moghuls? Can genuine life occur without some folly, some excess, some bouts of Heraclitan "strife"? We do not rule--but we cannot and will not be ruled.¶ ¶ In Russia the Narodnik-Anarchists would sometimes forge a ukase or manifesto in the name of the Czar; in it the Autocrat would complain that greedy lords and unfeeling officials had sealed him in his palace and cut him off from his beloved people. He would proclaim the end of serfdom and call on peasants and workers to rise in His Name against the government.¶ ¶ Several times this ploy actually succeeded in sparking revolts. Why? Because the single absolute ruler acts metaphorically as a mirror for the unique and utter absoluteness of the self. Each peasant looked into this glassy legend and beheld his or her own freedom--an illusion, but one that borrowed its magic from the logic of the dream.¶ ¶ A similar myth must have inspired the 17th century Ranters and Antinomians and Fifth Monarchy Men who flocked to the Jacobite standard with its erudite cabals and bloodproud conspiracies. The radical mystics were betrayed first by Cromwell and then by the Restoration--why not, finally, join with flippant cavaliers and foppish counts, with Rosicrucians and Scottish Rite Masons, to place an occult messiah on Albion's throne?¶ ¶ Among a people who cannot conceive human society without a monarch, the desires of radicals may be expressed in monarchical terms. Among a people who cannot conceive human existence without a religion, radical desires may speak the language of heresy.¶ ¶ Taoism rejected the whole of Confucian bureaucracy but retained the image of the Emperor-Sage, who would sit silent on his throne facing a propitious direction, doing absolutely nothing. In Islam the Ismailis took the idea of the Imam of the Prophet's Household and metamorphosed it into the Imam-of- one's-own-being, the perfected self who is beyond all Law and rule, who is atoned with the One. And this doctrine led them into revolt against Islam, to terror and assassination in the name of pure esoteric self-liberation and total realization.¶ ¶ Classical 19th century anarchism defined itself in the struggle against crown and church, and therefore on the waking level it considered itself egalitarian and atheist. This rhetoric however obscures what really happens: the "king" becomes the "anarchist," the "priest" a "heretic." In this strange duet of mutability the politician, the democrat, the socialist, the rational ideologue can find no place; they are deaf to the music and lack all sense of rhythm. Terrorist and monarch are archetypes; these others are mere functionaries.¶ ¶ Once anarch and king clutched each other's throats and waltzed a totentanz--a splendid battle. Now, however, both are relegated to history's trashbin--has-beens, curiosities of a leisurely and more cultivated past. They whirl around so fast that they seem to meld together...can they somehow have become one thing, a Siamese twin, a Janus, a freakish unity? "The sleep of Reason..." ah! most desirable and desirous monsters!¶ ¶ Ontological Anarchy proclaims flatly, bluntly, and almost brainlessly: yes, the two are now one. As a single entity the anarch/king now is reborn; each of us the ruler of our own flesh, our own creations--and as much of everything else as we can grab and hold.¶ ¶ Our actions are justified by fiat and our relations are shaped by treaties with other autarchs. We make the law for our own domains--and the chains of the law have been broken. At present perhaps we survive as mere Pretenders--but even so we may seize a few instants, a few square feet of reality over which to impose our absolute will, our royaume. L'etat, c'est moi.¶ ¶ If we are bound by any ethic or morality it must be one which we ourselves have imagined, fabulously more exalted and more liberating than the "moralic acid" of puritans and humanists. "Ye are as gods"--"Thou art That."¶ ¶ The words monarchism and mysticism are used here in part simply pour epater those egalito-atheist anarchists who react with pious horror to any mention of pomp or superstition-mongering. No champagne revolutions for them!¶ ¶ Our brand of anti-authoritarianism, however, thrives on baroque paradox; it favors states of consciousness, emotion and aesthetics over all petrified ideologies and dogma; it embraces multitudes and relishes contradictions. Ontological Anarchy is a hobgoblin for BIG minds. The translation of the title (and key term) of Max Stirner's magnum opus as The Ego and Its Own has led to a subtle misinterpretation of "individualism." The English-Latin word ego comes freighted and weighed with freudian and protestant baggage. A careful reading of Stirner suggests that The Unique and His Own-ness would better reflect his intentions, given that he never defines the ego in opposition to libido or id, or in opposition to "soul" or "spirit." The Unique (der Einzige) might best be construed simply as the individual self.¶ ¶ Stirner commits no metaphysics, yet bestows on the Unique a certain absoluteness. In what way then does this Einzige differ from the Self of Advaita Vedanta? Tat tvam asi: Thou (individual Self) art That (absolute Self).¶ ¶ Many believe that mysticism "dissolves the ego." Rubbish. Only death does that (or such at least is our Sadducean assumption). Nor does mysticism destroy the "carnal" or "animal" self--which would also amount to suicide. What mysticism really tries to surmount is false consciousness, illusion, Consensus Reality, and all the failures of self that accompany these ills. True mysticism creates a "self at peace," a self with power. The highest task of metaphysics (accomplished for example by Ibn Arabi, Boehme, Ramana Maharshi) is in a sense to self-destruct, to identify metaphysical and physical, transcendent and immanent, as ONE. Certain radical monists have pushed this doctrine far beyond mere pantheism or religious mysticism. An apprehension of the immanent oneness of being inspires certain antinomian heresies (the Ranters, the Assassins) whom we consider our ancestors.¶ ¶ Stirner himself seems deaf to the possible spiritual resonances of Individualism--and in this he belongs to the 19th century: born long after the deliquescence of Christendom, but long before the discovery of the Orient and of the hidden illuminist tradition in Western alchemy, revolutionary heresy and occult activism. Stirner quite correctly despised what he knew as "mysticism," a mere pietistic sentimentality based on self-abnegation and world hatred. Nietzsche nailed down the lid on "God" a few years later. Since then, who has dared to suggest that Individualism and mysticism might be reconciled and synthesized?¶ ¶ The missing ingredient in Stirner (Nietzsche comes closer) is a working concept of nonordinary consciousness. The realization of the unique self (or ubermensch) must reverberate and expand like waves or spirals or music to embrace direct experience or intuitive perception of the uniqueness of reality itself. This realization engulfs and erases all duality, dichotomy, and dialectic. It carries with itself, like an electric charge, an intense and wordless sense of value: it "divinizes" the self.¶ ¶ Being/consciousness/bliss (satchitananda) cannot be dismissed as merely another Stirnerian "spook" or "wheel in the head." It invokes no exclusively transcendent principle for which the Einzige must sacrifice his/her own-ness. It simply states that intense awareness of existence itself results in "bliss"--or in less loaded language, "valuative consciousness." The goal of the Unique after all is to possess everything; the radical monist attains this by identifying self with perception, like the Chinese inkbrush painter who "becomes the bamboo," so that "it paints itself."¶ ¶ Despite mysterious hints Stirner drops about a "union of Unique-ones" and despite Nietzsche's eternal "Yea" and exaltation of life, their Individualism seems somehow shaped by a certain coldness toward the other. In part they cultivated a bracing, cleansing chilliness against the warm suffocation of 19th century sentimentality and altruism; in part they simply despised what someone (Mencken?) called "Homo Boobensis."¶ ¶ And yet, reading behind and beneath the layer of ice, we uncover traces of a fiery doctrine--what Gaston Bachelard might have called "a Poetics of the Other." The Einzige's relation with the Other cannot be defined or limited by any institution or idea. And yet clearly, however paradoxically, the Unique depends for completeness on the Other, and cannot and will not be realized in any bitter isolation.¶ ¶ The examples of "wolf children" or enfants sauvages suggest that a human infant deprived of human company for too long will never attain conscious humanity--will never acquire language. The Wild Child perhaps provides a poetic metaphor for the Unique-one--and yet simultaneously marks the precise point where Unique and Other must meet, coalesce, unify--or else fail to attain and possess all of which they are capable.¶ ¶ The Other mirrors the Self--the Other is our witness. The Other completes the Self--the Other gives us the key to the perception of oneness-of-being. When we speak of being and consciousness, we point to the Self; when we speak of bliss we implicate the Other.¶ ¶ The acquisition of language falls under the sign of Eros-- all communication is essentially erotic, all relations are erotic. Avicenna and Dante claimed that love moves the very stars and planets in their courses--the Rg Veda and Hesiod's Theogony both proclaim Love the first god born after Chaos. Affections, affinities, aesthetic perceptions, beautiful creations, conviviality--all the most precious possessions of the Unique-one arise from the conjunction of Self and Other in the constellation of Desire.¶ ¶ Here again the project begun by Individualism can be evolved and revivified by a graft with mysticism--specifically with tantra. As an esoteric technique divorced from orthodox Hinduism, tantra provides a symbolic framework ("Net of Jewels") for the identification of sexual pleasure and non- ordinary consciousness. All antinomian sects have contained some "tantrik" aspect, from the families of Love and Free Brethren and Adamites of Europe to the pederast sufis of Persia to the Taoist alchemists of China. Even classical anarchism has enjoyed its tantrik moments: Fourier's Phalansteries; the "Mystical Anarchism" of G. Ivanov and other fin-de-siÉcle Russian symbolists; the incestuous erotism of Arzibashaev's Sanine; the weird combination of Nihilism and Kali-worship which inspired the Bengali Terrorist Party (to which my tantrik guru Sri Kamanaransan Biswas had the honor of belonging)...¶ ¶ We, however, propose a much deeper syncretism of anarchy and tantra than any of these. In fact, we simply suggest that Individual Anarchism and Radical Monism are to be considered henceforth one and the same movement.¶ ¶ This hybrid has been called "spiritual materialism," a term which burns up all metaphysics in the fire of oneness of spirit and matter. We also like "Ontological Anarchy" because it suggests that being itself remains in a state of "divine Chaos," of all-potentiality, of continual creation.¶ ¶ In this flux only the jiva mukti, or "liberated individual," is self-realized, and thus monarch or owner of his perceptions and relations. In this ceaseless flow only desire offers any principle of order, and thus the only possible society (as Fourier understood) is that of lovers.¶ ¶ Anarchism is dead, long live anarchy! We no longer need the baggage of revolutionary masochism or idealist self- sacrifice--or the frigidity of Individualism with its disdain for conviviality, of living together--or the vulgar superstitions of 19th century atheism, scientism, and progressism. All that dead weight! Frowsy proletarian suitcases, heavy bourgeois steamer-trunks, boring philosophical portmanteaux--over the side with them!¶ ¶ We want from these systems only their vitality, their life- forces, daring, intransigence, anger, heedlessness--their power, their shakti. Before we jettison the rubbish and the carpetbags, we'll rifle the luggage for billfolds, revolvers, jewels, drugs and other useful items--keep what we like and trash the rest. Why not? Are we priests of a cult, to croon over relics and mumble our martyrologies?¶ ¶ Monarchism too has something we want--a grace, an ease, a pride, a superabundance. We'll take these, and dump the woes of authority and torture in history's garbage bin. Mysticism has something we need--"self-overcoming," exalted awareness, reservoirs of psychic potency. These we will expropriate in the name of our insurrection--and leave the woes of morality and religion to rot and decompose.¶ ¶ As the Ranters used to say when greeting any "fellow creature"--from king to cut-purse--"Rejoice! All is ours!"
Individual terror is very important to the idea of terror with no aims to seize power or eliminate an enemy but rather protest and confrontation
Individual Terror: Concept and Typology¶ Ze'ev Iviansky¶ Journal of Contemporary History , Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1977), pp. 43-63¶ Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260236Revolutionary terrorism ('individual terror') has been of central importance in recent history, receiving widespread publicity. Yet in historical research and political science, it has remained a virtual no-man's land. Indeed, it has as yet not even been adequately defined.1 The first question confronting the student of terrorist events since the end of the nineteenth century is whether or not we are dealing with a phenomenon possessing its own special features. Is this a new form of revolutionary violence? Or perhaps merely the continuation of ancient political assassination, somewhat perfected - something in the nature of 'systematic assassination', which is differentiated from traditional political assassination in being, as Felix Gross puts it, 'a political method, a tactic guided by a strategy?'2 It will be argued here that political terror as practised in the modern world is qualitatively new - a phenomenon essentially distinct from political assassination, as practised in the ancient and early modern eras. The modern terrorist not only uses methods different in kind from the political assassin, but also has a different view of his role, of society, and of the significance of his act. The immediate roots of 'individual terror' lie in the late nineteenth century, when its manifestations were not isolated incidents, but a continuous wave of new revolutionary violence with its own ebb and flow, which lasted until the outbreak of the first world war and the Russian Revolution. One act of 'individual terror' - the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo - started the 'Great War'; another, Dora Kaplan's attempt on the life of Lenin (30 August 1918), gave the pretext for the 'Red Terror'3 - a period of uninterrupted anarchistic terror in Europe and the United States, terrorist warfare in Russia, and struggles for national liberation, using terror, in Ireland, Poland, the Balkans and India. 43 ¶ Journal of Contemporary History 'Individual terror' is one of the manifestations of the modern age of violence, a symptom and expression of the great changes taking place in the spheres of social stratification, government, technology, ideology and revolutionary activity. It is a new phenomenon with specific features; its systematic character does not distinguish it from classical political assassination, but its different complex of ideological motives and goals involving the eternal 'twins' of means and ends. One of the striking features of the term 'individual terror' is that it was neither coined nor adopted by the movements that propagated it or had recourse to this form of violence. Anarchism professed belief in 'propaganda by the deed.' The revolutionary syndicalists who derived their inspiration from its other manifestations called it reprise individuelle (individual expropriation) or 'direct action.' The programme of the executive committee of the Russian Narodnaya Volya Party (1879) speaks of 'destructive and terroristic activity.' N. Morozov, the leading theoretician of Narodnaya Volya's terrorism, at first calls the method, which he establishes on strategic and ideological foundations, 'neo-partisan warfare', and later, 'terroristic warfare', because this was the 'expression adopted by the people.' The fighting organization of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which, under the leadership of Josef Pilsudski, had recourse to terror, termed the method 'the armed deed' Czyn zbrojny. In India, the wave of terrorist activity which swept the country at the beginning of this century was known as 'the Russian method.' The term 'individual terror' developed in the course of the later controversy between the Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks (SDs) in Russia, both of the latter opposing terror on principle. In other words, it was coined by those who opposed terror in order to expose the contrast between the struggle they were advocating i.e. the class struggle, and that of the SRs, which they presented as a struggle of the individual or of individuals. The term coined by the opponents of terrorism was adopted later by some of its proponents for a number of reasons. Firstly, the term suited, in principle, the emphasis that devotees of the method placed on the personality, on the individual and his historical achievement - on the heroes in history. It emphasized the fact that terrorist activity, despite the fundamental ideological motivation, was always individual. Any blow aimed at shaking the establishment, the regime, the state or the foreign conqueror was always realized through individual acts of violence. Moreover, the disappearance of the movements which originally advo-cated and employed this method, and the victory of their opponents, who had invented the term, made its use almost inevitable. 44 ¶ Iviansky: Individual Terror: Concept and Typology Modern terror began with the slogan 'propaganda by the deed', advocated in the declaration of the delegates of the Italian Federation of the Anarchist International of 3 December 1876: The Italian Federation believes that the insurrectionary deed, which is designed to promote the principles of socialism by actions, is the most efficient means of propaganda and the one most capable of breaking through to the deepest social strata, and of attracting the most vital forces of humanity to the struggle of the Internationale.4 On 5 August 1877, Paul Brousse, one of the early activists and ideolo-gists of anarchism (but who quickly abandoned it) offered his interpre-tation of the slogan 'propaganda by the deed' as a method intended 'to show them the weary and inert masses that which they were unable to read, to teach them socialism in practice, to make it visible, tangible, concrete.' Even if the instigators of 'propaganda by the deed' were to be defeated, Brousse argued, 'it does not matter; the idea will march on, will put on flesh and sinews, and live in the eyes and on the faces of the people, who will shout for joy as it passes.'5 Peter Kropotkin, on the other hand, who, years later, concluded that it was impossible to demolish with a few kilograms of dynamite, his-torical structures erected over thousands of years,wrote: By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propa-ganda than thousands of pamphlets. Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt; it breedsd aring... Soon it becomes apparentt hat the establishedo rderd oes not have the strengtho ften supposed.O ne courageousa ct has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble . . .The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought ... hope is born in their hearts.6 At that point, Kropotkin claims, the existing regime puts up desperate resistance: 'The government persists; it is savage in its repressions.' And this in turn 'provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective, it drives the rebels to heroism.'7 As interpreted by the anarchists who espoused it, the slogan 'propa-ganda by the deed' refers to acts of violence which will demonstrate revolution in a tangible way, i.e. arouse and excite, elucidate and explain. The terrorist act itself becomes a manifesto; neither the removal of tyrants, opponents or enemies, nor the seizure of power is the declared aim of this violence, but protest and confrontation. It is the 'pulling of 45 ¶ Journal of Contemporary History the trigger' of revolution, as Chalmers Johnson put it; it is an act that may release and set in motion the forces of insurrection and the revolu-tionary potential of the masses.
We are not aiming to somehow "solve" the problems of the State, we are merely filling the cracks in the apparatus of control, the only revolutionary act which remains available to us.
“¶ T. A. Z.¶ ¶ The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism¶ ¶ By Hakim Bey 1991¶ ¶ THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE” http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html
Waiting for the Revolution¶ HOW IS IT THAT "the world turned upside-down" always manages to Right itself? Why does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell?¶ Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions--movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State--the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.¶ By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that "progress" which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo--rise up, surge. Insurgo--rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan "Revolution!" has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every "heaven" ruled by yet one more evil angel.¶ If History IS "Time," as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the "law" of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic--shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an "impossible angle" to the universe. History says the Revolution attains "permanence," or at least duration, while the uprising is "temporary." In this sense an uprising is like a "peak experience" as opposed to the standard of "ordinary" consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day--otherwise they would not be "nonordinary." But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns--you can't stay up on the roof forever-- but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred--a difference is made.¶ You will argue that this is a counsel of despair. What of the anarchist dream, the Stateless state, the Commune, the autonomous zone with duration, a free society, a free culture? Are we to abandon that hope in return for some existentialist acte gratuit? The point is not to change consciousness but to change the world.¶ I accept this as a fair criticism. I'd make two rejoinders nevertheless; first, revolution has never yet resulted in achieving this dream. The vision comes to life in the moment of uprising--but as soon as "the Revolution" triumphs and the State returns, the dream and the ideal are already betrayed. I have not given up hope or even expectation of change--but I distrust the word Revolution. Second, even if we replace the revolutionary approach with a concept of insurrection blossoming spontaneously into anarchist culture, our own particular historical situation is not propitious for such a vast undertaking. Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now from a head- on collision with the terminal State, the megacorporate information State, the empire of Spectacle and Simulation. Its guns are all pointed at us, while our meager weaponry finds nothing to aim at but a hysteresis, a rigid vacuity, a Spook capable of smothering every spark in an ectoplasm of information, a society of capitulation ruled by the image of the Cop and the absorbant eye of the TV screen.¶ In short, we're not touting the TAZ as an exclusive end in itself, replacing all other forms of organization, tactics, and goals. We recommend it because it can provide the quality of enhancement associated with the uprising without necessarily leading to violence and martyrdom. The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it. Because the State is concerned primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the TAZ can "occupy" these areas clandestinely and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative peace. Perhaps certain small TAZs have lasted whole lifetimes because they went unnoticed, like hillbilly enclaves--because they never intersected with the Spectacle, never appeared outside that real life which is invisible to the agents of Simulation.¶ Babylon takes its abstractions for realities; precisely within this margin of error the TAZ can come into existence. Getting the TAZ started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest strength lies in its invisibility--the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. As soon as the TAZ is named (represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again somewhere else, once again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle. The TAZ is thus a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies. And because the TAZ is a microcosm of that "anarchist dream" of a free culture, I can think of no better tactic by which to work toward that goal while at the same time experiencing some of its benefits here and now.¶ In sum, realism demands not only that we give up waiting for "the Revolution" but also that we give up wanting it. "Uprising," yes--as often as possible and even at the risk of violence. The spasming of the Simulated State will be "spectacular," but in most cases the best and most radical tactic will be to refuse to engage in spectacular violence, to withdraw from the area of simulation, to disappear.¶ The TAZ is an encampment of guerilla ontologists: strike and run away. Keep moving the entire tribe, even if it's only data in the Web. The TAZ must be capable of defense; but both the "strike" and the "defense" should, if possible, evade the violence of the State, which is no longer a meaningful violence. The strike is made at structures of control, essentially at ideas; the defense is "invisibility," a martial art, and "invulnerability"--an "occult" art within the martial arts. The "nomadic war machine" conquers without being noticed and moves on before the map can be adjusted. As to the future--Only the autonomous can plan autonomy, organize for it, create it. It's a bootstrap operation. The first step is somewhat akin to satori--the realization that the TAZ begins with a simple act of realization.¶ (Note: See Appendix C, quote by Renzo Novatore)
This is a challenge to the current violent use of structural abstractions of life by an engagement in aesthetic manipulation of the very same images on another plane to unite life and art as one thing.
“¶ T. A. Z.¶ ¶ The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism¶ ¶ By Hakim Bey 1991¶ ¶ THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE” http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html
COMMUNIQUE #6¶ I. Salon Apocalypse: "Secret Theater"¶ AS LONG AS NO Stalin breathes down our necks, why not make some art in the service of...an insurrection?¶ Never mind if it's "impossible." What else can we hope to attain but the "impossible"? Should we wait for someone else to reveal our true desires?¶ If art has died, or the audience has withered away, then we find ourselves free of two dead weights. Potentially, everyone is now some kind of artist--and potentially every audience has regained its innocence, its ability to become the art that it experiences.¶ Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols (in this case, the images we've been "given" by the organizers of this salon--murder, war, famine, and greed).¶ We might now contemplate aesthetic actions which possess some of the resonance of terrorism (or "cruelty," as Artaud put it) aimed at the destruction of abstractions rather than people, at liberation rather than power, pleasure rather than profit, joy rather than fear. "Poetic Terrorism." Our chosen images have the potency of darkness--but all images are masks, and behind these masks lie energies we can turn toward light and pleasure.¶ For example, the man who invented aikido was a samurai who became a pacifist and refused to fight for Japanese imperialism. He became a hermit, lived on a mountain sitting under a tree..¶ One day a former fellow-officer came to visit him and accused him of betrayal, cowardice, etc. The hermit said nothing, but kept on sitting--and the officer fell into a rage, drew his sword, and struck. Spontaneously the unarmed master disarmed the officer and returned his sword. Again and again the officer tried to kill, using every subtle kata in his repertoire--but out of his empty mind the hermit each time invented a new way to disarm him.¶ The officer of course became his first disciple. Later, they learned how to dodge bullets. We might contemplate some form of metadrama meant to capture a taste of this performance, which gave rise to a wholly new art, a totally non-violent way of fighting--war without murder, "the sword of life" rather than death.¶ A conspiracy of artists, anonymous as any mad bombers, but aimed toward an act of gratuitous generosity rather than violence--at the millennium rather than the apocalypse--or rather, aimed at a present moment of aesthetic shock in the service of realization and liberation.¶ Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.¶ Is it possible to create a SECRET THEATER in which both artist and audience have completely disappeared--only to re-appear on another plane, where life and art have become the same thing, the pure giving of gifts?¶ (Note: The "Salon Apocalypse" was organized by Sharon Gannon in July, 1986.)
The obsessive replication of death is to us an inappropriate estimation for the potential of existence –Death can only kill us once but until then we are free to express a free life of art on which to impose our imagination and will to create the most beautiful act we can conceive and to apply it as the value of our existence
“¶ T. A. Z.¶ The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism¶ By Hakim Bey 1991¶ THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE” http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html
AGAINST THE REPRODUCTION OF DEATH¶ ONE OF THE SIGNS of that End Time so many seem to anticipate would consist of a fascination with all the most negative and hateful detritus of that Time, a fascination felt by the very class of thinkers who consider themselves most perspicacious about the so-called apocalypse they warn us to beware. I'm speaking of people I know very well--those of the "spiritual right" (such as the neo-Guenonians with their obsession for signs of decadence)--and those of the post- philosophical left, the detached essayists of death, connoisseurs of the arts of mutilation.¶ For both these sets, all possible action in the world is smeared out onto one level plain--all become equally meaningless. For the Traditionalist, nothing matters but to prepare the soul for death (not only its own but the whole world's as well). For the "cultural critic" nothing matters but the game of identifying yet one more reason for despair, analyzing it, adding it to the catalogue.¶ Now the End of the World is an abstraction because it has never happened. It has no existence in the real world. It will cease to be an abstraction only when it happens--if it happens. (I do not claim to know "God's mind" on the subject- -nor to possess any scientific knowledge about a still non- existent future). I see only a mental image and its emotional ramifications; as such I identify it as a kind of ghostly virus, a spook-sickness in myself which ought to be expunged rather than hypochondriacally coddled and indulged. I have come to despise the "End of the World" as an ideological icon held over my head by religion, state, and cultural milieu alike, as a reason for doing nothing.¶ I understand why the religious and political "powers" would want to keep me quaking in my shoes. Since only they offer even a chance of evading ragnarok (thru prayer, thru democracy, thru communism, etc.), I will sheepishly follow their dictates and dare nothing on my own. The case of the enlightened intellectuals, however, seems more puzzling at first. What power do they derive from this telling-the- beads of fear and gloom, sadism and hatred?¶ Essentially they gain smartness. Any attack on them must appear stupid, since they alone are clear-eyed enough to recognize the truth, they alone daring enough to show it forth in defiance of rude shit-kicking censors and liberal wimps. If I attack them as part of the very problem they claim to be discussing objectively, I will be seen as a bumpkin, a prude, a pollyanna. If I admit my hatred for the artifacts of their perception (books, artworks, performances) then I may be dismissed as merely squeamish (and so of course psychologically repressed), or else at the very least lacking in seriousness.¶ Many people assume that because I sometimes express myself as an anarchist boy-lover, I must also be "interested" in other ultra-postmodern ideas like serial child-murder, fascist ideology, or the photographs of Joel P. Witkin. They assume only two sides to any issue--the hip side and the unhip side. A marxist who objected to all this death-cultishness as anti-progressive would be thought as foolish as a Xtian fundamentalist who believed it immoral.¶ I maintain that (as usual) many sides exist to this issue rather than only two. Two-sided issues (creationism vs darwinism, "choice" vs "pro-life," etc.) are all without exception delusions, spectacular lies.¶ My position is this: I am all too well aware of the "intelligence" which prevents action. I myself possess it in abundance. Every once in a while however I have managed to behave as if I were stupid enough to try to change my life. Sometimes I've used dangerous stupifiants like religion, marijuana, chaos, the love of boys. On a few occasions I have attained some degree of success--and I say this not to boast but rather to bear witness. By overthrowing the inner icons of the End of the World and the Futility of all mundane endeavor, I have (rarely) broken through into a state which (by comparison with all I'd known) appeared to be one of health. The images of death and mutilation which fascinate our artists and intellectuals appear to me--in the remembered light of these experiences--tragically inappropriate to the real potential of existence and of discourse about existence.¶ Existence itself may be considered an abyss possessed of no meaning. I do not read this as a pessimistic statement. If it be true, then I can see in it nothing else but a declaration of autonomy for my imagination and will--and for the most beautiful act they can conceive with which to bestow meaning upon existence.¶ Why should I emblemize this freedom with an act such as murder (as did the existentialists) or with any of the ghoulish tastes of the eighties? Death can only kill me once- -till then I am free to express and experience (as much as I can) a life and an art of life based on self-valuating "peak experiences," as well as "conviviality" (which also possesses its own reward).¶ The obsessive replication of Death-imagery (and its reproduction or even commodification) gets in the way of this project just as obstructively as censorship or media- brainwashing. It sets up negative feedback loops--it is bad juju. It helps no one conquer fear of death, but merely inculcates a morbid fear in place of the healthy fear all sentient creatures feel at the smell of their own mortality.¶ This is not to absolve the world of its ugliness, or to deny that truly fearful things exist in it. But some of these things can be overcome--on the condition that we build an aesthetic on the overcoming rather than the fear.¶ I recently attended a gay dance/poetry performance of uncompromising hipness: the one black dancer in the troupe had to pretend to fuck a dead sheep.¶ Part of my self-induced stupidity, I confess, is to believe (and even feel) that art can change me, and change others. That's why I write pornography and propaganda--to cause change. Art can never mean as much as a love affair, perhaps, or an insurrection. But...to a certain extent...it works.¶ Even if I'd given up all hope in art, however, all expectation of exaltation, I would still refuse to put up with art that merely exacerbates my misery, or indulges in schadenfreude, "delight in the misery of others." I turn away from certain art as a dog would turn away howling from the corpse of its companion. I'd like to renounce the sophistication which would permit me to sniff it with detached curiosity as yet another example of post-industrial decomposition.¶ Only the dead are truly smart, truly cool. Nothing touches them. While I live, however, I side with bumbling suffering crooked life, with anger rather than boredom, with sweet lust, hunger and carelessness...against the icy avant-guard and its fashionable premonitions of the sepulcher.¶
Our current conception of politics is rooted in desire control and morbid systems of exploitation that absurdly expect solutions to come in the form of legislation or other ready-made solutions. We don’t need a plan or set destination just need to know of a place where such expression is already possible.
“Creating Lines of Flight and Activating Resistance: Deleuze and Guattari’s War Machine”¶ Dr Robert Deuchars No-Date Political Science and International Relations Programme¶ Victoria University of Wellington http://www.philosophyandculture.org/books/2010/humanbeings07.pdf¶
It seems fair to state that we are living in what Antonio Gramsci called an interregnum, in, which ‘a great variety morbid symptoms appear’. Gramsci was writing specifically about historical fascism in the Italian setting, but his comments seem to resonate as powerfully today. In Gramsci I see affinities with the works of Foucault and of Deleuze and Guattari. Gramsci was all too well aware of the realities of the State and its apparatus of capture in both senses of the word. Literally incarcerated by Mussolini and also cognisant of the way in the way in which the State-capital nexus needs to control the desires of humans in order to make them ‘fit’ the logic and imperatives of capital. Gramsci recognised early on in Fordist production the need or desire for a new type of worker that would comply with mass industrialisation being introduced early in the twentieth century. In his discussion on the reconfiguration of labour and society following the methods of Taylorism and Fordism, Gramsci points out practices that render the worker that can meet the requirements of the producer, such as being diligent, consistent, calculable and (reasonably) sober; having a stable domestic existence. In other words Gramsci recognised the need for workers to be trained to conform to certain patterns of behaviour, regularities based on the control of time, movement and sexuality. The common theme that runs through these practices is delayed gratification i.e. waiting to be paid, waiting to be gratified at home, the delay of desire, all of which is subject to the regime of calculability. ¶ Returning to Deleuze and Guattari they argue using different language, a different time-frame but in similar vein that people are organized on a large-scale according to the underlying logic of capital and the accumulation of surplus value. As they say:¶ ‘a State apparatus is erected upon the primitive agricultural communities, which already have lineal-territorial codes; but it overcodes them, submitting them to the power of a despotic emperor, the sole and transcendent public-property owner, the master of the surplus or the stock, the organizer of large-scale works (surplus labor), the source of public functions and bureaucracy. This is the paradigm of the bond, the knot. Such is the regime of signs of the State: overcoding, or the Signifier. It is a system of machinic enslavement: the first “megamachine” in the strict sense, to use Mumford’s term’. ¶ What Deleuze and Guattari suggest is that it is indeed the State (or ordering practices) that renders human beings calculable. It is the State that takes hunter-gatherer societies and introduces agriculture, metallurgy and lastly public works, not the other way around. As such the State is an alien formation in relation to societies; societies who may indeed have maintained quite complex networks of exchange for example, but which nonetheless, had no desire to be captured by an exterior force; an alien force not really required but imposed. Why? The logic is reasonably straightforward and can be expressed by the desire to capture the energy of bodies and put them to use for extraction of that energy. The human body is simply energy-matter and the apparatus of capture needs to extract as much of this energy for itself; the creation of surplus value. In line with Foucault’s reasoning the population is an undifferentiated mass that requires, naming, classifying, encoding and ordering largely through the tripartite system of power he outlines in Discipline and Punish. Manuel DeLanda, again using different language but expressing the same sentiment argues that society and the population that inhabits it, ¶ ‘…appears as just another ensemble of fluxes, with reservoirs of potentials of different kinds (water, energy, population, wealth etc.) driving those fluxes. From the point of view of the machinic phylum, we are simply a very complex dynamical system. And like any other physical ensemble of fluxes, we can reach critical points (singularities, bifurcations) where new forms of order may spontaneously emerge’. ¶And it is this potential that the apparatus of capture embodied in the State formation seeks. And it is at this point that we must take one variant of the war machine and ask: what does it have to offer in terms of resistance to capture? Deleuze and Guattari seem to argue near the end of Plateau 13 that it is perhaps to be found in the minoritarian politics of ‘The ‘revolutionary movement (the connection of flows, the composition of nondeumerable aggregates, the becoming-minoritarian of everybody/everything)’ . This variant of the war machine is the one that we are most interested at this juncture. What does it offer?¶ Those seeking a plan, an alternative a manifesto should be disappointed, or confused by the antagonism between the line and the point. The point of the line is, as I have been arguing is to follow the line; not to have a point; that’s the point of not having a point. Consider escape along lines of flight as journeys; journeys’ where one does not know the destination but where ‘other world’s are (already) possible’. There is an emancipatory aspect to this line of thinking that is despised by some of those on the Left, who would prefer to stay pure and clean. What the above suggests is the enormous contribution Deleuze and Guattari’s excursus on the sedentary and the nomadic can add to the analytical armour towards an understanding the modern subject, both in the sense of individual identity, subjectivities and forms of various political communities. What they highlight are the absurdities of those seeking ready-made solutions. On the contrary Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the experimental, the ambiguous, the misleading and the aleatory nature of becoming and of life itself. In turn this opens up theoretical space for others beyond social theory to re-conceptualize the concrete assembling and dissembling of many entities without recourse to mainstream IR neo-realism or to more recent challenges from constructivism. And in the spirit of sampling, splicing, re-mixing found in musical creation this logic is perfectly applicable to intellectual creations too, such as this essay or a book. Viewing this essay as an emergent assemblage as opposed to some(thing) that has to be listened to or read as being on the register of intellectual authority has merit and shares similarities with the Deleuzean attentiveness to the emergent possibilities of the ‘social’, as well as the ‘ambiguous, complex and contested flows that International Relations focus on stable, unitary actors and identities can at times obscure’. ¶
Movement is not required, nor inherent of the nomadic thought rather in the administrative images of terror, while true terror lies in our ability to distance ourselves physically and mentally from this mutilation of others.
“Creating Lines of Flight and Activating Resistance: Deleuze and Guattari’s War Machine”¶ Dr Robert Deuchars No-Date Political Science and International Relations Programme¶ Victoria University of Wellington http://www.philosophyandculture.org/books/2010/humanbeings07.pdf¶
The nomad thought of Nietzsche the warrior supplants the sedentary nature of codification and recodification of the three elements of philosophical discourse Deleuze identifies as being central to philosophy; ‘law, institutions and contracts’. On the contrary Nietzsche’s discourse is according to Deleuze: ¶ ‘…above all nomadic; its statements can be conceived as the products of a mobile war machine and not the utterances of a rational, administrative machinery, whose philosophers would be bureaucrats of pure reason. It is perhaps in this sense that Nietzsche announces the advent of a new politics that begins with him (which Klossowski calls a plot against his own class)’. This new politics is one of movement versus the sedentary and it is Nietzsche that inaugurates it. In contemporary society we now see this interplay between the nomadic and the sedentary in all aspects of existence, from disembodied social networking to the global ‘war on terror’. It is not simply a refusal to be identified; rather it is intrinsically implicated in the instability of identities, whether that takes on an aesthetic value viewed in positive terms or even in the most venal acts by state terrorists and retail terrorists alike. The suicide bomber is celebrated by many and cannot be said to be a ‘worse’ person than the controller of a drone aeroplane who sits with his playstation in an aircraft hanger in Nevada, wreaks a horrible violence, mutilates others ‘from a distance’, and then goes home, pats the dog and plays with his kids. Which one of these two can be considered a warrior? The one who seeks death or the one who fights and kills without being exposed to danger? Perhaps it is both, each with a radically different and changing subjectivity. It is as, Deleuze correctly highlights in Nietzsche, a refusal to be fixed or to be pinned down, to be always moving even if one doesn’t go anywhere, for example the soldier-warrior who sits, rather than marching. Deleuze says as follows: ‘Even historically, nomads are not necessarily those who move about like migrants. On the contrary they do not move; nomads, they nevertheless stay in the same place and continually evade the codes of settled people’. In short it is war: a war of becoming over being, of the sedentary over the nomadic. Becoming different, to think and act differently. This form of ambiguity of the decentred self, continuously shifting defines both the warrior who ‘wars’ without war and the warrior who ‘wars’ without the chance of ‘winning’. They both denote a shift in the calculus of modern war.¶ Deleuze asserts that it is with Nietzsche that creative force can be utilized for revolutionary ends but avoiding the repetition of the state-form that revolutionary struggle fights against. There is no point he argues to overthrow the state-form merely to re-create it. Rather he points to the originality of Nietzsche who ‘made thought into a machine of war—a battering ram—into a nomadic force’. Nomad thought, then represents a fundamental shift in the thinking of the left as it breaks completely with the idea of the mass party being the motor of resistance to modernist capitalism. Deleuze sees through the emptiness and ultimately the futility of such movements and posits a radical re-thinking of thought; a type of thought that is intrinsically ‘related to the outside that will not revive an internal despotic unity’.
