Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

 

NOTES TO PP. 380-384 □ 557

 

49.  Anny Milovanoff, "La seconde peau du nomade," Nouvelles litt'eraires, no. 2646 

(July 27, 1978), p. 18: "The Larbaa nomads, on the border of the Algerian Sahara, use the 

word triga, which generally means road or way, to designate the woven straps serving to rein-

force the cords holding the tent to the stakes.... In nomad thought, the dwelling is tied not to a 

territory but rather to an itinerary. Refusing to take possession of the land they cross, the 

nomads construct an environment out of wool and goat hair, one that leaves no mark at the 

temporary site it occupies.... Thus wool, a soft material, gives nomad life its unity.... 

Nomads pause at the representation of their journeys, not at a figuration of the space they 

cross. They leave space to space.... Woolly polymorphism." 

50.  See W. Montgomery Watt, Mohammed at Medina (London: Oxford University 

Press, 1956), pp. 85-86, 242. 

51.  Emmanuel Laroche, Histoire de la ratine "Nem " en grec ancien (Paris: Klincksieck, 

1949). The root "Nem" indicates distribution, not allocation, even when the two are linked. 

In the pastoral sense, the distribution of animals is effected in a nonlimited space and implies 

no parceling out of land: "The occupation of shepherd, in the Homeric age, had nothing to do 

with a parceling of land; when the agrarian question came to the foreground, in the time of 

Solon, it was expressed in an entirely different vocabulary." To take to pasture (nemo) refers 

not to a parceling out but to a scattering, to a repartition of animals. It was only after Solon 

that Nomos came to designate the principle at the basis of the laws and of right (Thesmo'i and 

Dike), and then came to be identified with the laws themselves. Prior to that, there was instead 

an alternative between the city, or polis, ruled by laws, and the outskirts as the place of the 

nomos. A similar alternative is found in the work of Ibn Khaldun: between hadara as city liv-

ing, and badiya as nomos (not the town, but the preurban countryside, the plateau, steppe, 

mountain, or desert). 

52.  Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 

abridged by D. C. Somerwell, vol. 1, pp. 164-186: "They flung themselves upon the Steppe, 

not to escape beyond its bounds but to make themselves at home on it" (p. 168). 

53.  See Pierre Hubac, Les nomades (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1948), pp. 26-29 

(although Hubac tends to confuse nomads and migrants). 

54.  On the nomads of the sea, or of the archipelago, Jose Emperaire writes: "They do not 

grasp an itinerary as a whole, but in a fragmentary manner, by juxtaposing in order its various 

successive stages, from campsite to campsite in the course of the journey. For each of these 

stages, they estimate the length of the crossing and the successive changes in direction mark-

ing it." Les nomades de la mer (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 225. 

55.  Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (London: Longmans, Green, 1959), pp. 112-113, 

125, 165-166. 

56.  See the two admirable descriptions, of the sand desert by Wilfred Thesiger and of the 

ice desert by Edmund Carpenter, in Eskimo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964): the 

winds, and tactile and sound qualities; the secondary character of visual data, particularly the 

indifference of the nomads to astronomy as a royal science; and yet the presence of a whole 

minor science of qualitative variables and traces. 

57.  EmileFelixGautier,Le passe del'AfriqueduNord (Paris: Payot, 1952), pp. 267-316. 

58.  From this perspective, Clastres's analysis of Indian prophetism can be generalized: 

"On one side, the chiefs, on the other, and standing against them, the prophets. ... And the 

prophetic machine worked perfectly well since the karai were able to sweep astonishing 

masses of Indians along behind them.. .. the insurrectional act of the prophets against the 

chiefs conferred on the former, through a strange reversal of things, infinitely more power 

than was held by the latter." Society against the State, pp. 184-185. 

59.  One of the most interesting themes of the classic work by Paul Alphandery (La 

chretiente et Videe de croisade [Paris: Albin Michel, 1959] is his demonstration that the 

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558 D NOTES TO PP. 384-386

 

changes in course, the pauses, the detours were an integral part of the Crusade: "this army of 

crusaders that we envision as a modern army, like those of Louis XIV or Napoleon, marching 

with absolute passivity, obeying the will of a diplomatic officer and staff. Such an army knows 

where it is going, and when it makes a mistake, it is not for lack of reflection. A history more 

attentive to differences accepts a more realistic image of the army of the Crusade. The army of 

the Crusade was freely, sometimes anarchically alive. ... This army was motivated from 

within, as a function of a complex coherence by virtue of which nothing happened by chance. 

It is certain that the conquest of Constantinople had its reason, necessity and a religious char-

acter, like the other deeds of the Crusades" (vol. 2, p. 7). Alphandery shows in particular that 

the idea of a battle against the Infidel, at any point, appeared early on, along with the idea of 

liberating the Holy Land (vol. 1, p. 219).

 

60.  Modern historians have been inspired to fine analyses by this confrontation between 

the East and the West, which began in the Middle Ages (and is tied to the question, Why did 

capitalism develop in the West and not elsewhere?). See especially Fernand Braudel, Capital-

ism and Material Life, 1400-1800, trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 

pp. 97-108; Pierre Chaunu, L'expansion europeenne du Xllle au XVe siecle (Paris: PUF, 

1969), pp. 334-339 ("Why Europe? Why not China?"); Maurice Lombard, Espaces et reseaux 

du hautMoyen Age (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), chapter 8 (and p. 219: "What is called defor-

estation in the East is named clearing in the West. The first deep cause of the shift of the domi-

nant centers from the East to the West is therefore a geographical reason: forest-clearing 

proved to have more potential than desert-oasis"). 

61.  Marx's observations on the despotic formations of Asia have been confirmed by the 

African analyses of Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 

1959): at the same time immutability of form and constant rebellion. The idea of a "transfor-

mation" of the State indeed seems to be a Western one. And that other idea, the "destruction" 

of the State, belongs much more to the East and to the conditions of a nomad war machine. 

Attempts have been made to present the two ideas as successive phases of revolution, but 

there are too many differences between them and they are difficult to reconcile; they reflect 

the opposition between the socialist and anarchist currents of the nineteenth century. The 

Western proletariat itself is perceived from two points of view: as having to seize power and 

transform the State apparatus (the point of view of labor power), and as willing or wishing for 

the destruction of the State (this time, the point of view of nomadization power). Even Marx 

defines the proletariat not only as alienated (labor) but as deterritorialized. The proletariat, in 

this second perspective, appears as the heir to the nomad in the Western world. Not only did 

many anarchists invoke nomadic themes originating in the East, but the bourgeoisie above all 

were quick to equate proletarians and nomads, comparing Paris to a city haunted by nomads 

(see Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of 

the Nineteenth Century, trans. Frank Jellenck [New York: H. Fertig, 1973], pp. 362-366). 

62.  See Lucien Musset, Les invasions. Le secondassaut (Paris: PUF, 1965), for example, 

the analysis of the Danes' three "phases," pp. 135-137. 

63.  Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York: Semiotext[e], 

1986), pp. 12-13 andpassim. Not only is the "town" unthinkable apart from the exterior flows 

with which it is in contact, and the circulation of which it regulates, but specific architectural 

aggregates, the fortress, for example, are veritable transformers, by virtue of their interior 

spaces, which allow an analysis, prolongation, or restitution of movement. Virilio concludes 

that the issue is less confinement than the management of the public ways, or the control of 

movement. Foucault was already moving in this direction with his analysis of the naval hospital 

as operator and filter; see Discipline and Punish, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: 

Vintage, 1975), pp. 143-146. 

64.  On Chinese, and Arab, navigation, the reasons behind their failure, and the impor- 

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