Deterritorializing"Deterritorialization"- Fromthe Anti-Oedipus to A ThousandPlateaus EugeneW. Holland EIGHT YEARS AFTER THE ANTI-OEDIPUS, the long-awaited second volume of Capitalismand Schizophreniaappeared underthe title A Thousand Plateaus.? It hardly seemed to belong with the earlier volume, in one respect:the pointsof departurein Marx and Freud thatmade "capitalism and schizophrenia"a fittingrubric for the Anti-Oedipus all but disappearin A ThousandPlateaus, or ratherbecome submergedin a farvaster field of referencesranging from cell biologyto botanyand zoology to geologyand beyond. It is neverthelesssome of the connectionsbetween the two volumes thatI want to explorehere, by focusingon theevolution of a term crucialto themboth: territorialization. One way of understandingthe rela- tion of A ThousandPlateaus to the Anti-Oedipusis to imagineDeleuze and Guattarisetting out to "deconstruct"in the second volume any binary oppositions leftstanding at the end of the first.Not that Deleuze and Guattari are beholden to Derrida in this respect: schizoanalytic "deconstruction"(if it can be called that) derives fromthe unconscious logic of non-globalconnection and inclusivedisjunction, as specifiedin the Anti-Oedipus.2 The connectivesynthesis produces not the closed binary couple, "thisand that"but ratheran open-endedseries "this and thenthat and thenthis...." Inclusivedisjunction, similarly, generates not the closed binaryalternative "either this or that"but an open-endedseries of alterna- tives,"this or thator this...."Thus whereDerrida re-writes a binaryopposi- tion such as speech versus writing in terms of a single, broader "non-concept"like "writing"("arche-trace"), Deleuze and Guattariinstead defy binary closure by multiplying terms. The binary pair molar/molecularfrom the Anti-Oedipus,for example, is re-writtenin A ThousandPlateaus in termsof varyingdegrees of segmentarity(from rigid to supple) and in connectionwith yet another term,the line-of-flight. Despotic over-codingand civilized de-codingare re-writtenin termsof sig- nifyingand post-signifyingregimes, which exist alongside pre-signifying and counter-signifyingregimes. An opposition fundamentalto the Anti- Oedipus-paranoia versus schizophrenia-is re-located in A Thousand SubStance#66, 1991 55 56 EugeneW. Holland Plateauson the body-without-organs,of which thereare now at least three differentkinds, and so forth.The Anti-Oedipusof coursehad its own way of underminingthe binaryopposition of paranoiaversus schizophrenia:it performeda mode ofdiscourse that was paranoidand schizophrenicat the same time.That wasn't easy: paranoia and schizophreniaoccupy opposite ends of the social and libidinalspectrum in the Anti-Oedipus:paranoia designatesthe despotic over-codingof power thatimposes its absolute standard of value on individuals and social forms alike, whereas schizophreniadesignates the freeing of desireand social productionfrom theconstraints of any codingwhatsoever, and theirrelease into the affirm- ative improvisationof "permanentrevolution." Thus the "paranoid ten- dencies" of stylein the Anti-Oedipuslinked Marx and Nietzschewith the data of anthropologyand a critiqueof Freud and Lacan to produce a kind of revolutionaryunified field theory for the human sciences,while at the same timethe "schizoidtendencies" of the text reduced such an apparently all-encompassingargument to flightsof surreal imagery and schizophrenic word salad - fromwhich it is difficult(if not intentionallyimpossible) to draw any definitiveconclusions.3 Yet theAnti-Oedipus retained features of thetraditional "book" whose arborescenceA ThousandPlateaus opposes in thename of the rhizome: it was still fundamentallylinear, organized in chapterswhich moved fromin- dividual psychology(the desiringmachines), through a critique of the nuclear "holy family"of capitalismand psychoanalysis,to a typologyof socio-libidinalmodes ofproduction (savagery, despotism, capitalism), and concludedwith a definitionand programfor schizoanalysis. In A Thousand Plateaus,discursive innovation affects the work's organizationmore than its style.To be sure, conceptual"argument" is eschewed,as in the Anti- Oedipus,in favorof imagessuch as "faciality,""smooth" versus "striated" space, and so forth:these non-conceptsare strategically"under-deter- mined" so that theirunderstanding and extensionto otherdomains re- quires theinvention of novel connectionsrather than the mere application of a pre-establishedrule.4 More strikingstill, however, is the willfula- linearityof the text.5In pursuingthe binary oppositions left standing at the end of the Anti-Oedipus,the aim of a plateau is not just to multiply terminology,but to keep "deconstructing/multiplying"a given set of termsuntil a point is reached at which theyintersect with terms coming fromdeconstructions on otherplateaus, withoutever collapsinginto or becoming identicalwith them.Such intersectionswill forma rhizome, somethingthat develops "au milieu":in themiddle, in between.This proce- dure is whatgives A ThousandPlateaus its characteristic shape: moreor less SubStance #66,1991 Deterritorialization 57 focusedanalysis on eachplateau, but with the connections among plateaus and theconsistency of terminology across the plateaus very much a matter of conjecture(although the conclusion does map one possibleset of con- nectionsamong terms and plateaus).It also contributestothe difficulty of discussinga singleterm in isolation from others, a tackwhich space limita- tionsnonetheless constrain us tohere. With that difficulty inmind, we can tracethe evolution of thenotion of "deterritorialization"from the Anti- Oedipusto A ThousandPlateaus. Deterritorializationin the Anti-Oedipus In the Anti-Oedipus,deterritorialization and its opposite,"reter- ritorialization,"are comparativelycircumscribed terms, with a very specificjob to do. Derivedinitially from Lacanian psychoanalysis, they functionas a kindof hinge-term to connectMarx and Freud,to articulate the conceptsof libido and labor-power.For Lacan, "territorialization" refersto the imprintof maternalnourishment and care-givingon the child'slibido, a processwhich creates charged erogenous zones and objects out oforgans and orifices.For Deleuze and Guattari,conversely, "deter- ritorialization"in the psychologicalregister designates the freeingof "schizophrenic"libido from pre-established objects of investment: from the Mother'sbreast, for instance, or fromthe family triangle of theOedipus complex.At the same time,but in thesocial register,it designatesthe freeingof labor-power from the seigneurial plot of land, the assembly line, or othermeans of production.Deleuze and Guattarithus rewrite the processMarx called "primitive accumulation" interms of territorialization: withthe emergence of capitalismin England(when the Enclosure Acts privatizedcommon land forsheep grazing), peasants were deterritorial- ized fromthe land onlyto be reterritorializedonto textile looms in the nascentgarment industry. In linewith this dual-register use ofthe notion of territorialization,schizoanalysis expands the fieldof the libidinalto includethe investmentof humanenergy of any kind:perceptual and physical,cognitive and productive,desire and work. Capitalism,however, is notthe only mode of socio-libidinal produc- tion thatdeterritorializes; all powersocieties do so. Despotismdeter- ritorializesby forcibly transferring thefocus of desire and production from local territoriesto thetranscendent figure of thedespot; representatives and representationsof thedespot prosecute such transferenceby over- codingthe local codes of "savagery"and re-directingthem in his favor. SubStance#66, 1991 58 Eugene W. Holland (DespoticChristianity, for instance, over-codes ritual pagan observancesof the wintersolstice and the vernal equinox with celebrationsof Christ's birthand resurrection.) Capitalismdiffers from despotic power societyin thatit is an economic power society:it deterritorializesnot by over-codingvia representation, but by de-codingrepresentation altogether--by substituting a calculus of abstractquantities for the codes and over-codes that defined concrete qualities under savagery and despotism.6 Instead of over-coding, capitalismaxiomatizes: it joins the deterritorializedand de-coded flowof pure liquid wealth (investedas capital in a means of production)with anotherdeterritorialized and de-coded flow:pure labor-powerdisciplined or "skilled" to matchits given taskon the assemblyline or in some other manufacturingprocess. The tendencyof therate of profitto fallwill then forcethe addition of more axioms: productionprocesses are continually transformedby the inputof technicalinformation from the hard sciences. Crises of over-productionwill forcethe addition of still other axioms: consumerpreferences are continuallytransformed by advertisingso that consumptionis reterritorializedonto the pre-existingcommodities, there- by realizingprofit on investedcapital. In thiscontext, reterritorialization is the "dead hand of thepast," as Marxsaid, "thatweighs upon theliving..." The "constantrevolutionizing of production[and] uninterrupteddistur- bance of all social conditions"that for Marx "distinguishthe bourgeois epoch fromall earlierones"7 entail perpetualcycles of divestmentand re-investment:capital is extractedhere (the Rust Belt,the United States) and re-investedthere (the South,the PacificRim); specificlabor skillsare valorized here and now, only to become worthlessa few yearslater; con- sumer taste is programmedto suit the commoditiesof one production cycle,then de-programmed