By Maty Candelaria
This is a Letter to Jack F, author of the blog “Notes for Nomads” on Substack.
Greetings again, Jack!
When I say that Deleuze and Guattari are explicitly calling the War Machine and State Apparatus kinds of technology, I don’t mean this metaphorically. What’s odd is that they are not types of technology that are obvious when you look at them. You can look at a car, an Iphone or a computer and immidiatly recognize that it is in fact an assemblage of technology. On the other hand, do we feel this way when navigating the labryth of bureaucracy?
Why not?
Well, I think it is because even if we do recognize that the bureaucracy is a kind of technology, when we are in it we only engage with discrete parts of the machine at a time. It is only when we have gone through the bureaucracy, particularly its loops that lead nowhere, and have been processed by it that we can begin to see how these parts function as a whole, and therefore recognize the totality of the machine. This is because we are able to recognize the machines deadlocks, redirecting, and circuitry. When we are circulated between multiple departments, possessing no power to process our request, we are quite literally caught in a machinic feedback loop. But it isn’t a loop which becomes better over time, but a kafkaesque eternal return of the same.
So what kind of machines are The War Machine and The State Apparatus? They are socio-technological machines which arise from real material conditions. Not every War Machine or State Apparatus is the same, and they don’t always show up in the form of Nomadism on the onehand, and States on the other. Instead, it's better to think of these differing types as Bergsonian tendencies. Somewhere in pre-history, there was a kind of ‘spark’, an original impetus that propelled these tendencies forward in separate directions.
But even this reading implies a Bourgoise historical-evolutionism, which Deleuze and Guattari strongly reject. Unlike the historical-archeological account, Deleuze and Guattari are arguing against the common narrative that so-called “primitive” societies progress towards States. Instead, they leverage the urstaat hypothesis: rather than viewing a historical progression from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies to states, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the State is something that comes fully formed (as do counter-state societies).
Departing slightly from the so-called Historian-Marx, Deleuze and Guattari claim: “It is not the State that pre- supposes a mode of production; quite the opposite, it is the State that makes production a "mode.1" Or in other words, there is not a linear development of society where one kind of society changes to another simply because they become more populated and complex. The figurations of ‘The State’ and ‘Nomadism’ (which opposes State formations) are understood as formations that societies tend towards. Thus, history does not follow a proggresive or evolutionary model:
“Economic evolutionism is an impossibility; even a ramified evolution, "gatherers—hunters—animal breeders—farmers-industrialists," is hardly believable. An evolutionary ethnology is no better: "nomads— seminomads—sedentaries." Nor an ecological evolutionism: "dispersed autarky of local groups—villages and small towns—cities—States." All we need to do is combine these abstract evolutions to make all of evolutionism crumble; for example, it is the city that creates agriculture, without going through small towns. To take another example, the nomads do not precede the sedentaries; rather, nomadism is a movement, a becoming that affects sedentaries, just as sedentarization is a stoppage that settles the nomads”2.
Here, we see these models in the form of superimposed cartographies laying over each other. These figurations don’t progress in a linear sequence, but to borrow Marx’s phrase hang-together (zusammenhängen)3. These modelings are not abstract categories which exist outside of history, but quite the opposite. They are virtualies which are actualized through history. Since these modelings exist together, they necessarily affect and cause material transformations in one another.
Then what other forms can these machines take? Deleuze and Guattari give many examples, but let's start with a fun one: games!
The brilliant example that Deleuze and Guattari give is the opposition between Chess and Go. If you’ve read this section, you’ll see how much fucking shit is packed into just one paragragh. It’s such a poignant example which deserves our close reading.
Also, if you are like me, you have not played chess and have never heard of Go. But something tells me you are into Chess, or at least know how to play it. I’m not gonna explain chess because I assume you already know what it is, but I would recommend you watch this video on how to play Go, at least to visualize it. But honestly, you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of the game to understand what they are getting at.
I was talking with my friend Sam about Chess recently because it's a game that he enjoys, and he explained to me that when he plays chess, he enjoys the feeling of immersing himself into the game's logic. In my view, this is the immanatizing function of games.
Games have the power of pulling you into a virtual realm with real rules which are internal only to themselves. However, despite that all games have internal rules, this does not mean that all internal rules function the same. Some establish rules of identity and interiority, and others establish rules of affection and exterority.
Chess in particular, for Deleuze and Guattari:
“...is a game of State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with a relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game's form of interiority”4.
On the other hand:
“Go pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: "It" makes a move. "It" could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones...On the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only)”5.
Furthermore, it's not just the pieces which function differently, but also the space itself. One space is seen as striated and the other is seen as smooth. One is rule governed (a ruled-rule), and the other takes rules to its limit to see what they can do (ruling-rule).
“Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus of going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival”6.
To summarize, Chess is seen as a game of interiority and Go as a game of exteriority. This might seem strange given that both games are coded with their own syntax and semiotics and by their own set of internal rules. However, for Deleuze and Guattari, it's not the fact that Chess has rules which makes it a game of interority, it's how those rules function. The fact that chess pieces have a certain identity which defines their movement is what gives their pieces an intensive quality. On the otherhand, since Go pieces have more flexible rules, and can interact with other pieces in a multitude of ways, this makes them extensive. The Go Piece doesn’t identify but becomes depending on its relationally with the other pieces.
Chess pieces are Monads which only have a restricted internal movement, whereas Go pieces are Spinozian bodies-without-organs with the capacity to affect and to be affected. Go pieces don’t have idenity that is inscribed but possess a becoming that is embodied and performed.
“Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology”7.
My point here is not to shame chess, or to say it's reserved only for priests, bishops and kings. Rather, my point is to show, as Deleuze and Guattari have, how space can be conceptualized and interacted with differently within the context of games.
Let’s take another example: video games. What is the difference between the level design of Super Mario Brothers (1985) and Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)?
Super Mario Brothers has a linear game design with some branching paths, and clear visual signifiers which stand in for enemies and objects. Furthermore, visual signifiers are relatively consistent throughout the game. A koopa is a koopa, a goomba is a goomba, a piranha plant is a piranha plant. You punch a box, you get a mushroom. You get a mushroom, you get big.
Sonic the Hedgehog has its own syntax and sign posts too, but with a crucial difference. The sense of speed becomes so fast that the player must respond to obstacles in the moment. Movement becomes a kind of intuition as the spirit bounces in all directions as a little blue ball. Sonic interacts with the map as body-without-organs. He connects to paths, flies off another, runs into a spike, goes backwards and diagonally. However, you could easily argue that it isn’t the player who is in control, but the map itself which prefigures your movement. This would be true for both games, especially with Sonic whose paths act as tracks. The point here is that even though there are paths, Sonic can disengage with one path, and move onto another. Sonic doesn’t stop moving, unless he stops to eat a chili dog.
Neither game is better or worse, just different. But in either case, which game we are playing does make a difference.
Asking which game is better is a boring moral question. Mario has clearly won the olympics, although Sonic’s specter never fails to pop up every few years in zombified forms.
What is more interesting is to ask, how do these games function differently? Are they games which prioritze interiority and identity, or exteriority and affect? In most cases, these differing tendencies can be wrapped up into a single game. They can only be distinguished with an Eye that is selective, and in intuition which differentiates.
References and Further Reading
Delezue and Guattari, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine", A Thousand Plateaus.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, “Apparatus of Capture”.
Thomas Nail, Marx in Motion.
Udacity, Go - Basic Rules, youtube video.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, “Apparatus of Capture”.
Ibid.
I am taking this translation and insight from Thomas Nail’s book, Marx in Motion.
Deleuze and Guattari, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine", A Thousand Plateaus.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
I absolutely loved the Sonic/Mario example