Comments and Questions to: John Protevi
LSU French Studies
Protevi Home Page

Classroom use only. Do not cite w/o permission.
March 23, 1999
 
 

Axiom I. The war machine is exterior to the state apparatus.

Proposition I: Exteriority of the war machine is first attested to in mythology, epic, drama, and games.

A. Dumezil (comparative mythology): 2 heads of political sovereignty
    1. magician-king: bond
    2. jurist-priest: pact
B. theory of games
    1. chess: State game: striated space: polis: codes/decodes space
    2. go: war machine: smooth space: nomos: territorializes/deterritorializes space
C. Bantu myths
D. warrior appears as negativity to State, as stupid or sinful, bcs. positive concept of w.m., pure
    form of exteriority to the State, is often confused w/ one of the heads of the State: but State
    can easily appropriate the w.m. as its Army
E. Trojan war myth: Kleist
    1. w.m. double bind: Army or suicide machine
    2. Kleist's modernity: secrecy, speed, affect
F. disappearance of w.m.: scatters into revolutionary anti-State powers:
    "thinking, loving, dying, or creating machines..."

Problem I: Is there a way of warding off the formation of a State apparatus (or its equivalent in groups?)

Proposition II: The exteriority of the w.m. is also attested to by ethnology (tribute to Clastres)

A. Clastres breaks w/ evolutionary model
    1. State is not telos, but only a particular (conservative) form of social organization
    2. war can be means of warding off formation of State
B. collective mechanisms of inhibition (of State):
    1. band/pack/gang: "fabric of immanent relations" (=rhizome)
    2. discipline only after State appropriation
C. critique of Clastres:
    1. makes formal exteriority of w.m. into real independence in a state of nature
    2. D/G radical anti-evolutionism leads them to uphold thesis of the Urstaat
D. relation of State to outside
    1. State has 2 outsides
        a. world wide machines: commerce, religion, "movements"
        b. local mechanisms: bands, minorities (sometimes merging with a.)
    2. identity and difference and interiority and exteriority
        a. State=form of interiority=reproduction of identity across variations
        b. w.m.=form of exteriority=exists only in its own metamorphoses
    3. must see State and outside in perpetual field of interaction (coexistence and competition)

Proposition III: w.m. and epistemology

A. nomad science (Serres)
    1. hydraulic model
    2. becoming/heterogeneity (clinamen)
    3. turbulence: vortical organization: open/smooth space
    4. problematic vs. theorematic
B. nomad science: relation to w.m.
    1. borderline phenomena: encampments, descriptive/projective geometry
    2. sea as smooth space
    3. rhythm vs. measure
C. example of Gothic cathedrals/18th C bridges
    1. question of the corps: link to State, but also forms a w.m.
    2. corps is not an organism (central focus, hierarchy, etc.)
    3. nomad origin of the w.m.
    4. fringes of State corps form w.m.
D. Husserl
E. relation of nomad science to work: e.g., the Gothic journeymen
    1. royal science as hylomorphic (all matter is content; all form is expression)
    2. nomad science
        a. sees matter as having form of content (= singularities)
        b. sees a non-formal expression or matter of expression (=traits)
F. two models of science (cf. the Timaeus)
    1. Compars: royal, legal, constants, hylomorphic
    2. Dispars: nomadic, material, forces, variables in continuous variation
G. other distinctions
    1. speed vs. slowness
    2. reproducing vs. following (a flow in a vectorial field strewn w/ singularities)
    3. translatability of smooth and striated space
    4. resistances
    5. problematics vs. axiomatics

Problem III: How extricate thought from the State model?

Proposition IV: the image of thought (noology)

A. State model of thought: the two heads (thought as principle, form of interiority)
    1. imperium: capture/foundation (mythos) truth
    2. republic: pact/legislative-juridical ground (logos) free spirit
B. thought invents fiction of State of universality (occluding outside of the State)
    1. State gives thought form of interiority; thought gives interiority form of universality
    2. obediance/common sense (unity of faculties; State consensus raised to an absolute)
C. Noology: study of images of thought and their historicity
    1. philosopher has not been the only "image-trainer" (poets, sociologists, psychoanalysts)
    2. counter-thoughts: destroy images: make thought a w.m.
        a. form of exteriority of thought
        b. examples: thought at pathos: Artaud, Kleist
D. two universals of the classical thought image (striating of mental space)
    1. whole: final ground of being--imperium
    2. subject: converts being into a pour nous--republic
E. nomad thought
    1. not whole, but desert/orient: constructed smooth space
    2. not subject, but race/tribe: always the oppressed race (to prevent fascism)

Axiom II: three aspects of the w.m.

Proposition V: nomad--w.m.--space

A. nomad territory
    1. points are relays on trajectory
    2. trajectory distributes people/animals in an open space
    3. nomad space is smooth: nomads remain in place
        a. movement (extensive): unitary body moving from point to point
        b. speed (intensive) atomic motion filling smooth space as vortex
B. nomad = deterritorialization w/ no reterritorialization afterward; or reterr on deterr itself
    1. nomads are vectors of deterritorialization
    2. fine topology: haecceities, sets of relations
    3. smooth/nomad = local absolute; sedentary/striated = relatively global
C. religion and nomadism
    1. de jure distinction
        a. religion converts the absolute into horizon: part of State; center of globe
        b. nomads retain nonlimited locality
    2. de facto mixes
        a. religions form outside of State organizations
        b. holy war--w.m.--prophet--Crusades
D. nomad smooth and State striated space
    1. nomads between striated space of forest and farmland
    2. Oriental v. Western State: same composition; different development/organization)
        a. disconnectedness of State components: Asian despotism
        b. interconnectedness of W. State: transforming revolutions
    3. State striation: regulating flows
    4. sea: de facto mixing of smooth and striated (NB: smooth space not always revolutionary)

Proposition VI: nomad numbers

A. numerical organization: nomads: Army adopts w.m. methods
B. three types of human organization
    1. lineal: primitive, clan: segments in action
    2. territorial: State, property: all segments overcoded (number mastering matter)
        a. imperial spatium
        b. geometrical extensio
    3. numerical: nomad w.m.: numbering number: distribution, directional, rhythmic
C. specificity of the numbering number
    1. complex/articulated: assemblage: men/weapons/animals/vehicles
    2. replicating/doubling:
        a. lineages are coded numerically
        b. extraction to form special corps
    3. necessary functions of w.m. accomplished by numbering (=corps formation)
        a. ward off lineal aristocracy
        b. ward off territorial State
    4. use of outsiders or slaves in special corps
D. "nomads have no history, only geography" (contra sedentary historiography slanders)

Proposition VII: nomad "affects": weapons of war

A. weapons and tools: seemingly similar, there are differences
    1. weapons are projective; tools introceptive
    2. weapons imply speed and vector
        a. w.m. vs. the hunt: abstracts idea of motor from prey
        b. two objections to w.m. link with speed
            i. w.m. has gravity too
            ii. speed belongs to the tool as well (model of work vs. that of free action)
B. priority of assemblage to technical element
    1. work -- tool; w.m. -- weapon
    2. "assemblages are passional; compositions of desire"
        a. work: feeling: form of worker: introceptive sens: direction/meaning:
        b. w.m.: affects: active discharge: projective sens: weapons
            i. Kleist
            ii. martial arts
    3. tool -- signs; weapons -- jewelry (expression)
C. differential method: direction, vector, model, expression, desiring tonality
    1. ambiguity, affinity: find the line of flight

Proposition VIII: Metallurgy and nomadism

A. problems w/ nomadic weaponry: what is the relation to empire: must find new concept of the technological lineage
B. metallurgy works w/ lines of variation, not w/ constant laws (of relation of variables)
    1. machinic phylum: link of singularities and traits of expression via "operations"
    2. assemblage: invention of a constellation of singularities and traits deducted from flow
    3. single machinic phylum: flow of matter in continuous variation
C. matter-flow: destratified, deterritorialized matter
    1. Husserl: vague and material essences: neither form nor thing
    2. corporeality: vague corporeal essence
        a. passage to limit: deformation/transformation: events (singularities/thresholds)
        b. expressive/intensive qualities/affects (traits)
    3. autonomous intermediaries (critique of Husserl)
D. Simondon: critique of hylomorphism
    1. must add new concepts to the matter-form pair
        a. matter-movement carries singularities as "implicit forms"
        b. formal essence has variable intensive affects as "materiality"
    2. artisan must surrender to matter, follow it
    3. again, an autonomous intermediary
E. machinic phylum definition: matter in variation: singularities and traits
    1. matter-flow must be followed: itinerant/ambulant artisan
        a. different types of followings: tranhumant is not migrant is not itinerant is not nomad
        b. different types of flows: rotation; matter-flow; smooth space
    2. why focus on metal? it raises to cness processes hidden in hylomorphism
        a. elsewhere: operations between thresholds of matter and form
        b. metallurgy: operations astride thresholds of matter and form
            i. energetic materiality overspills prepared matter
            ii. qualitative de- or trans-formation overspills form
        c. matter-form yields to non-organic life: metallurgy = nomad science
        d. metal = corps sans organes
F. artisans: itinerants: corps: follow subsoil: between nomads and States
    1. mines: line of flight: smooth space vs. striated State
    2. smiths: holey space: neither smooth nor striated: hybrid or alloy
    3. metallurgy is the autonomous intermediary: asymmetrical:
        a. connection: nomad: rhizome
        b. conjunction: overcode: State

Axiom III: nomad w.m. = form of expression; metallurgy = form of content

Proposition X: w.m. does not aim at war

A. battle is not the object of war: (cf. relations btw war and guerilla warfare)
B. war is not the object of the war machine
    1. w.m. aims at occupying smooth space
    2. war occurs in collision of w.m. and State or city as forces of striation
        a. war is supplement of w.m.
        b. e.g., Moses supplemented by Joshua
C. w.m. and State apparatus
    1. war is not object of State (they dominate by police)
    2. State: turn w.m. into Army and make war object of Army
        a. possibility: hesitation of nomad once having conquered and become dynasty
        b. concrete forms: mercenary/territorial; professional/conscripts, ...
        c. means: aspects of State apparatus
D. comparison w/ Clausewitz
    1. Clausewitz:
        a. pure Idea of war: eliminate the enemy
        b. real wars: States as "conductors" of Idea
        c. two poles of war: total and limited
    2. D/G:
        a. pure Idea = nomad w.m.  (NB: "nomads" are ideal)
            i. de facto mixes
            ii. necessary supplement
        b. appropriation of w.m. (not realization of Idea of war)
        c. total war: capitalism: targeting investment in economy and population
            i. total war subordinated to State political aims
            ii. but object of war becomes unlimited
        d. States become only opposable parts of a great planetary w.m.
            i. at first, this is fascism: war movement is its own aim
            ii. postfascist: peace of terror/survival as object of w.m.
        e. w.m. now (late 70s: MAD) reforms a smooth space of peace surpassing total war
            i. w.m. aims at order
            ii. States are only objects or means adapted to w.m.
E. present situation (late 70s)
    1. worldwide w.m.: conditioned by capital investment in equipment and people
    2. counterattack, revolution: sabotage (equipment); deserter (morals of people)
    3. w.m. and war
        a. war as object: destruction: only in relation to States (appropriated w.m.)
        b. essence of w.m. = creative line of flight; construction of smooth space
    4. nomads are not privileged (they are only one instance of w.m.)
    5. what is privileged is the process of creation (that which defines nomads)