this week minfeub watched The Vanishing 1988. rachel found out about it from a friend’s review, and chose it because it’s partially in dutch
[471] In *Timaeus,* 28–29, Plato entertains for an instant the thought that Becoming is not simply the inevitable characteristic of copies or reproductions, but could itself be a model rivaling the Identical and the Uniform. He states this hypothesis only in order to reject it; for it is true that if becoming is a model, not only must the duality of the model and the copy, of the model and reproduction, disappear, but the very notions of model and reproduction tend to lose all meaning, [TRANS: Deleuze develops this point in “Plato and the Simulacrum,” trans. Rosalind Krauss, *October,* 27 (Winter 1983), pp. 45–56. See especially p. 53.]
[472] [TRANS: Friedrich Nietzsche, *The Will to Power,* trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1968), sec. 630(1885), p. 336.]
[473] The situation is in fact more complex than that, and gravity is not the only feature of the dominant model: there is heat in addition to gravity (already in chemistry, combustion is coupled with weight). Even so, the problem was to know to what extent the “thermal field” deviated from gravitational space, or on the contrary was integrated with it. Monge is a typical example; he began by grouping heat, light, and electricity as “variable affections of bodies,” the concern of “specific physics,” while general physics would deal with extension, gravity, and movement. It was only later that Monge unified all of the fields under general physics (Anne Querrien).
[475] Carlos Castaneda, *The Teachings of Don Juan* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 88.
[476] Albert Lautman has shown quite clearly how Riemann spaces, for example, admit a Euclidean conjunction making it possible at all times to define the parallelism of two neighboring vectors; this being the case, instead of exploring a multiplicity by legwork, the multiplicity is treated as though “immersed in a Euclidean space with a sufficient number of dimensions.” See *Les sch’emas de structure* (Paris: Hermann, 1938), pp. 23–24, 43–47.
[477] In Bergson, the relations between intuition and intelligence are very complex, and they are in perpetual interaction. Bouligand’s theme is also relevant here: the dualism of the two mathematical elements, the “problem” and the “global synthesis,” is developed only when they enter a field of interaction in which the global synthesis defines the “categories” without which the problem would have no general solution. See *Le d’eclin des absolus math’ematico-logiques.*
[478] Marcel Detienne, in *Les maitres de v’erit’e dans la Grece archdique* (Paris: Maspero, 1973), clearly articulates these two poles of thought, which correspond to the two aspects of sovereignty according to Dumezil: the magico-religious speech of the despot or of the “old man of the sea,” and the dialogue-speech of the city. Not only are the principal character types of Greek thought (the Poet, the Physicist, the Philosopher, the Sophist, etc.) situated in relation to these poles, but Detienne interposes between the two poles a distinct group, the Warriors, which brings about transition or evolution.
[479] There exists a Hegelianism of the right that lives on in official political philosophy and weds the destiny of thought to the State. Alexandre Kojeve (“Tyranny and Wisdom,” in Leo Strauss, *On Tyranny* [New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963]) and Eric Weil *(Hegel et I’Etat. Philosophiepolitique* [Paris: Vrin, 1974]) are its recent representatives. From Hegel to Max Weber there developed a whole line of reflection on the relation of the modern State to Reason, both as rational-technical and as reasonable-human. If it is objected that this rationality, already present in the archaic imperial State, is the *optimum* of the governors themselves, the Hegelians respond that the rational-reasonable cannot exist without a minimum of participation by everybody. The question, rather, is whether the very form of the rational-reasonable is not extracted from the State, in a way that necessarily makes it right, gives it “reason” *(lui donner necessairement “raison”).*
[480] On the role of the ancient poet as a “functionary of sovereignty,” see Dumezil, *Servius et la Fortune* (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp. 64ff., and Detienne, *Les maitres de v’erit’e,* pp. 17ff.
[481] See Michel Foucault’s analysis of Maurice Blanchot and the form of exteriority of thought: “La pensee du dehors,” *Critique,* no. 229 (June 1966), pp. 523–548.
it was dutch which was pretty cool but it took place in france mostly (also frick notepad for auto-capitalizing france >~<). The guy who looked like Mangione STOP AUTO CAPITALIZING YOU STUPID PROGRAM the guy who looked like mangione was cool, he felt kind of possessive but that also tracked with my experience with dutch guys in the past. The French - istf if this program autocaptialized again im going to explode - guy was kind of an ass but had enough character description that it still felt nice. I liked the dutch language and the music was wonderful; with a climactic and emotionally charged ending that was satisfying, albeit grim.
[482] Nietzsche, *Schopenhauer as Educator,* in *Untimely Meditations,* trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 177–178.
[483] A curious text of Karl Jaspers, entitled *Descartes und die Philosophie* (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1956), develops this point of view and accepts its implications.
[484] Kenneth White, *Intellectual Nomadism.* The title of the second volume of this unpublished work is *Poetry and Tribe.*
[485] [TRANS: Arthur Rimbaud, *A Season in Hell,* trans. Louise Varese (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1952), pp. 9, 13, 17, 39.]
[486] 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 reinforce 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.”
[487] See W. Montgomery Watt, *Mohammed at Medina* (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 85–86, 242.
[488] 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 living, and *badiya* as nomos (not the town, but the preurban countryside, the plateau, steppe, mountain, or desert).
[489] 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).
[490] See Pierre Hubac, *Les nomades* (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1948), pp. 26–29 (although Hubac tends to confuse nomads and migrants).
[491] 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 marking it.” *Les nomades de la mer* (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 225.
10/12, the nederlandse brings it up a score from 9
[492] Wilfred Thesiger, *Arabian Sands* (London: Longmans, Green, 1959), pp. 112–113, 125, 165–166.
[493] 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.
[494] EmileFelixGautier,*Le passe del’AfriqueduNord (Paris:* Payot, 1952), pp. 267–316.
[495] 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.
[496] 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 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 character, 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).
[497] 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, *Capitalism 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 deforestation in the East is named clearing in the West. The first deep cause of the shift of the dominant centers from the East to the West is therefore a geographical reason: forest-clearing proved to have more potential than desert-oasis”).
[498] 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 “transformation” 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).
[499] See Lucien Musset, *Les invasions. Le secondassaut* (Paris: PUF, 1965), for example, the analysis of the Danes’ three “phases,” pp. 135–137.
[500] 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.
[501] On Chinese, and Arab, navigation, the reasons behind their failure, and the importance of this question in the East-West “dossier,” see Braudel, *Capitalism and Material Life,* pp. 300–309, and Chaunu, *L’expansion europeenne,* pp. 145–147.
recima from minfeub (uncapitalized inshallah >~<)
[502] Virilio gives a very good definition of the fleet in being and its historical consequences: “The fleet in being... is the permanent presence in the sea of an invisible fleet able to strike no matter where and no matter when ... it is a new idea of violence that no longer comes from direct confrontation... but rather from the unequal properties of bodies, evaluation of the number of movements allowed them in a chosen element, permanent verification of their dynamic efficiency....Henceforth it is no longer a question of crossing a continent or an ocean from one city to the next, one shore to the next. The fleet in being creates ... the notion of displacement without destination in space and time.... The strategic submarine has no need to go anywhere in particular; it is content, while controlling the sea, to remain invisible ... the realization of the absolute, uninterrupted, circular voyage, since it involves neither departure nor arrival....If, as Lenin claimed,‘strategy means choosing which points we apply force to,’ we must admit that these ‘points’, today, are no longer geostrategic strongpoints, since from any given spot we can now reach any other, no matter where it might be... *geographic localization* seems to have definitively lost its strategic value, and, inversely, that this same value is attributed to the *delocalization of the vector,* of a vector in permanent movement”; *Speed and Politics,* pp. 38,40–41,134–135. Virilio’s texts are of great importance and originality in every respect. The only point that presents a difficulty for us is his assimilation of three groups of speed that seem very different to us: (1) speeds of nomadic, or revolutionary, tendency (riot, guerrilla warfare); (2) speeds that are regulated, converted, appropriated by the State apparatus (management of the public ways); (3) speeds that are reinstated by a worldwide organization of total war, or planetary overarmament (from the fleet in being to nuclear strategy). Virilio tends to equate these groups on account of their interactions and makes a general case for the “fascist” character of speed. It is, nevertheless, his own analyses that make these distinctions possible.
[503] Jean-Pierre Vernant in particular has analyzed the connection between the Greek city-state and a homogeneous geometrical extension, *Mythe et pensee chez les Grecs* (Paris: Maspero, 1971 -1974), vol. 1, part 3. The problem is necessarily more complicated in relation to the archaic empires, or in relation to formations subsequent to the classical city-state. That is because the space in question is very different. But it is still the case that the number is subordinated to space, as Vernant suggests with regard to Plato’s ideal state. The Pythagorean or Neoplatonic conceptions of number envelop imperial astronomical spaces of a type other than homogeneous extension, but they maintain the subordination of the number; that is why Numbers become *ideal,* but not strictly speaking “numbering.”
[504] Dumezil stresses the role played by the arithmetic element in the earliest forms of political sovereignty. He even tends to make it a third pole of sovereignty. See *Servius et la Fortune* and *Le troisieme souverain* (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1949). But the role of this arithmetic element is, rather, to organize a matter; in so doing it submits that matter to one or the other of the two principal poles.
[505] Karl von Clausewitz stresses the secondary role of geometry, in tactics and in strategy: *On War,* trans. Michael Howard, Peter Paret, and Bernard Brodie (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 214–216 (“The Geometrical Factor”).
[506] See one of the most profound ancient texts relating the number and direction to the war machine, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, *The Records of the Grand Historian,* trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), vol. 2, pp. 155–193 (“The Account of the Hsiung-nu”).
[507] Frank Herbert, *Children of Dune* (New York: Berkley Books, 1977), p. 212. One may refer to the characteristics proposed by Julia Kristeva to define the numbering number: “arrangement,” “plural and contingent distribution,” “infini-point,” “rigorous approximation,” etc. *Semeiotike. Recherches pour une semanalyse* (Paris: Seuil, 1969), pp. 293–297.
[508] Boris Iakovlevich Vladimirtsov, *Le regime social des Mongols,* trans. Michel Carsow (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1948). The term used by Vladimirtsov, “antrustions,” is borrowed from the Saxon regime, in which the king’s *company,* or “trust,” was composed of Franks.
[509] A particularly interesting case is that of a special body of smiths among the Tuareg, called the *Enaden* (the “Others”); the Enaden are thought to have been originally Sudanese slaves, Jewish settlers in the Sahara, or descendants of the knights of Saint Louis. See Rene Pottier, “Les artisans sahariens du metal chez les Touareg,” in *Techniques et civilisations,* vol. 1 *(M’etaux et civilisations),* no. 2 (1945), pp. 31–40.
[510] Feudalism is no less a military system than so-called military democracy; but both systems assume an army integrated into some kind of State apparatus (for feudalism, it was the Carolingian land reform). It is Vladimirtsov who developed a feudal interpretation of the nomads of the steppe, whereas Mikhail Griaznov, *The Ancient Civilization of Southern Siberia,* trans. James Hogarth (New York: Cowles, 1969), leans toward military democracy. But one of Vladimirtsov’s main arguments is that the organization of the nomads becomes feudal precisely to the extent that it is in disintegration, or is integrated into the empires it conquers. He himself remarks that in the beginning the Mongols did not organize the sedentary land they took over into fiefs, true or false.
[511] J. F. C. Fuller, *Armament and History* (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), p. 5.
i liked it! the end was quite nice, and the main guy was pretty cool. honestly didn’t really like the evil guy’s performance or writing so much, though. but maybe that’s because he was effectively portraying an inhuman sociopath?
[512] Paul Virilio, “Metempsychose du passager,” *Traverses,* no. 8 (May 1977), pp. 11–19. Virilio, however, asserts that there was an indirect transition from hunting to war: when women served as “portage or pack” animals, which already enabled the hunters to enter into a relation of “homosexual duel” transcending the hunt. But it seems that Virilio himself invites us to make a distinction between *speed,* as projector and projectile, and *displacement,* as transport and portage. The war machine is defined from the first point of view, while the second relates to the public sphere. The horse, for example, is not a part of the war machine if it serves only to transport men who dismount to do battle. The war machine is defined by action, not transport, even if the transport reacts upon the action.
[513] J. F. C. Fuller, *Armaments and History,* pp. 137ff., shows that the First World War was first conceived as an offensive war of movement based on artillery. But artillery was turned against artillery, forcing immobility. It was not possible to reinstate mobility in the war through “ever-increasing shell fire” (p. 138) since the craters made the terrain all the harder to negotiate. The solution, to which the English, and General Fuller in particular, made decisive contributions, came in the form of the tank: the tank, a “landship” (p. 139), reconstituted a kind of maritime or smooth space on land, and “superimposed naval tactics on land warfare” (p. 140). As a general rule, military response is never in kind: the tank was the response to artillery, the helicopter to the tank, etc. This makes for an innovation factor in the war machine that is very different from innovation in the work machine.
[514] On this general distinction between the two models, “work-free action,” “consuming force/conserving force,” “real effect/formal effect,” etc., see Martial Gueroult’s exposition, *Dynamique et metaphysique leibniziennes* (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934), pp. 55, 119 ff., 222–224.
[515] Marcel Detienne, “La phalange, problemes et controverses,” in *Problemes de la guerre en Grece ancienne (Civilisations et societes,* no. 11), ed. Jean-Pierre Vernant (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), pp. 119–143: “Technology is in a way internal to the social and the mental,” (p. 134).
[516] On the stirrup and the plow, see Lynn Townsend White, Jr., *Medieval Technology and Social Change* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), chapters 1 and 2. Similarly, it has been shown in the case of dry rice cultivation in Asia that the digging stick, the hoe, and the plow depend upon collective assemblages that vary according to population density and the fallow period. This enables Braudel to conclude: “The tool, according to this theory, is the result and no longer the cause”; *Capitalism and Material Life,* p. 116.
[517] Treatises on martial arts remind us that the Ways, which are still subject to the laws of gravity, must be transcended in the void. Kleist’s *About Marionettes,* trans. Michael Lebeck (Mindelheim: Three Kings Press, 1970), without question one of the most spontaneously oriental texts in Western literature, presents a similar movement: the linear displacement of the center of gravity is still “mechanical” and relates to something more “mysterious” that concerns the soul and knows nothing of weight.
[518] See Paul Pelliot, “Les systemes d’ecriture en usage chez les anciens Mongols,” *Asia Major* 2 (1925), pp. 284–289: The Mongols used the Uighur script, with the Syriac alphabet (it was the Tibetans who produced a phonetic theory of Uighur writing); the two versions of the *Secret History of the Mongols* that have been passed down to us are a Chinese translation and a phonetic transcription in Chinese characters.
[519] Georges Charriere, *Scythian Art* (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1979), p. 185 [translation modified].
[520] See Lucien Musset, *Introduction a la runologie* (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1965).
[521] There are, of course, forms of cooking and architecture that are part of the nomad war machine, but they fall under a different “trait,” one distinguishing them from their sedentary form. Nomad architecture, for example, the Eskimo igloo orthe Hunnish wooden palace, is a derivative of the tent: its influence on sedentary art came by way of domes and half-domes, and above all of *space starting very low,* as in a tent. As for nomad cooking, it consists literally of break-fast (the paschal tradition is nomadic). And it is under this trait that it can be part of a war machine: for example, the Janissaries used a cooking pot as their rallying point; there were different ranks of cooks, and their hat had a wooden spoon through it.
-rachel
[522] Itisinthe *Trait’edu rebelle* (Paris: Bourgois, 1981) that Jiinger takes his clearest stand against national socialism and develops certain points contained in *Der Arbeiter:* a conception of the “line” as an active escape passing between the two figures of the old Soldier and the modern Worker, carrying both toward another destiny in another assembly (nothing of this remains in Heidegger’s notion of the Line, although it is dedicated to Jiinger).
[523] Lynn White, Jr., who is actually not inclined to ascribe much power of innovation to the nomads, sometimes establishes extensive technological lineages with surprising origins: he traces hot-air and turbine technologies to Malaya *(Medieval Technology and Social Change,* p. 95 and note): “Thus a chain of technological stimuli may be traced back from some of the major figures of early modern science and technology through the later Middle Ages to the jungles of Malaya. A second, and related, Malay invention, the fire piston, may have had significant influence upon the European understanding of air pressure and its applications.”
[524] On the particularly thorny question of the stirrup, see Lynn White, Jr., *Medieval Technology and Social Change,* chapter 1.
[525] See the fine article by A. Mazaheri, “Le sabre contre l’epee,” *Annates* 13, no. 4 (October-December 1958), pp. 669–686.
[526] Henri Limet, *Le travail du metal au pays de Sumer au temps de la life dynastie d’Ur* (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960), pp. 33–40.
[527] Along these lines, Mazaheri effectively demonstrates that the saber and sword belong to two distinct technological lineages. In particular, *damasking (damassage),* which does not come from Damascus at all, but rather from the Greek or Persian word for diamond, designates the treatment of cast steel that makes it as hard as a diamond and the designs in this steel resulting from the crystallization of the cement (“true damask was made in the centers that had never experienced Roman domination”). But on the other hand, *damascening (damasquinage),* which did come from Damascus, designates only inlay in metal (or in fabric), intentional designs imitating damasking using entirely different means.
[528] Andre Leroi-Gourhan, *Milieu et techniques* (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945), pp. 356ff. Gilbert Simondon, discussing short series, takes up the question of the “absolute origins of a technological lineage,” or of the creation of a “technical essence”: *Du mode d’existence des objects techniques* (Paris: Aubier, 1969), pp. 41–49.
[529] On the mold-modulation relation, and the way in which molding hides or contracts an operation of modulation that is essential to matter-movement, see Simondon, *Du mode d’existence,* pp. 2 8–50 (“modulation is molding in a continuous and perpetually variable manner”; p. 42). Simondon clearly shows that the hylomorphic schema owes its power not to the technological operation but to the social model of *work* subsuming that operation (pp. 47–49).
[530] Simondon feels no special attraction for the problems of metallurgy. His analysis is not, in fact, historical and prefers to deal with examples drawn from electronics. But, historically, there is no electronics without metallurgy. Thus Simondon pays homage to metallurgy: “Metallurgy does not entirely accommodate itself to an analysis using the hylomorphic schema. The fixing of the form is not accomplished visibly in a single stroke, but in several successive operations; the forging and quenching of steel are anterior and posterior, respectively, to the fixing of the form in the strict sense; forging and quenching are, nevertheless, operations that constitute objects” *(L’individu,* p. 59).
[531] Not only must myths be taken into account, but also positive history, for example, the role of “the brass” in the evolution of musical form; or again, the constitution of a “metallic synthesis” in electronic music (Richard Pinhas).
“lets hop in the car of the kidnapping killer! hope i don’t get kidnapped and killed!”
[532] Wilhelm Worringer defines Gothic art in terms of a geometrical line that is “primitive” but has taken on life. But this vitality is not organic, as it will be in the classical world: this line “embodies no organic expression... it is nevertheless of the utmost vitality....Since this line is lacking in all organic timbre, its expression of life must, as an expression, be divorced from organic life... The pathos of movement which lies in this vitalized geometry—a prelude to the vitalized mathematics of Gothic architecture—forces our sensibility to an effort unnatural to it.” *Form in Gothic* (London: Putnam’s and Sons, 1927), pp. 41–42.
[533] This is one of the essential points of V. Gordon Childe’s argument in *The Prehistory of European Civilization* (London: Cassell, 1962): the metallurgist is the first specialized artisan, whose sustenance is made possible by the formation of an agricultural surplus. The relation of the smith to agriculture has to do not only with the tools smiths manufacture but also with the food they take or receive. The Dogon myth, as analyzed in its variants by Griaule, can be seen as marking this relation, in which the smith receives or steals grains, and hides them in his mallet.
[534] Maurice Lombard, <em>Lesm’etauxdansI’ancien mondedu VeauXIesiecle</em> (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), pp. 75, 255.
[535] The social position of the smith has been the object of detailed studies; for Africa in particular see the classic study by W. B. Cline, “Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa,” *General Series in Anthropology,* no. 5 (1937); and Pierre Clement, “Le forgeron en Afrique noire,” *Revue de geographie humaine et d’ethnologie,* no. 2 (April-June 1948), pp. 35–58. But these studies are hardly conclusive; the better defined the principles invoked—“reaction of contempt,” “of approbation,” “of apprehension”—the hazier and more overlapping the results, as seen in Clement’s tables.
[536] See Jules Bloch, *Les Tziganes,* Que sais-je?, no. 580 (Paris: PUF, 1969). Bloch demonstrates precisely that the distinction between sedentaries and nomads becomes secondary in connection with cave dwelling.
[537] Elie Faure, *Medieval Art,* vol. 2 of *History of Art,* trans. Walter Pach (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publishing, 1937), pp. 12–14.
[538] On these peoples and their mysteries, see the analyses of V. Gordon Childe, *The Prehistory of European Society,* chapter 7 (“Missionaries, Traders and Warriors of Temperate Europe”), and *The Dawn of European Civilization* (New York: Knopf, 1958).
[539] Maurice Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, *Le renard pale,* vol. 1 (Paris: Institut d’ethnologie, 1965), p. 376.
[540] The book by Robert James Forbes, *Metallurgy in Antiquity* (Leiden: Brill, 1950), analyzes the different ages of metallurgy, as well as the types of metallurgists that existed in the “ore stage”: the “miner,” who did the prospecting and mining; the “smelter” [who produced the crude metal or alloy]; the “blacksmith” [who manufactured mass products from crude metals]; and the “metalworker” [who produced smaller objects; includes gold- and silver-smiths] (pp. 74–76). The specialization system becomes more complicated in the Iron Age, with attendant variations in the nomad-itinerant-sedentary distribution.
[541] The texts of T. E. Lawrence, *Seven Pillars of Wisdom* (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935) and “The Science of Guerrilla War,” in *Encyclopedia Britannica,* 14<sup>th</sup> ed. (1929), vol. 10, pp. 950–953, remain among the most significant works on guerrilla warfare; they present themselves as an “anti-Foch” theory and elaborate the notion of the nonbattle. But the nonbattle has a history that is not entirely dependent on guerrilla warfare: (1) the traditional distinction between the “battle” and the “maneuver” in war; see Raymon Aron, *Penser la guerre. Clausewitz* (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 122–131; (2) the way in which the war of movement places the role and importance of the battle in question (as early as Marshal de Saxe, and the controversial question of the battle during the Napoleonic Wars); (3) finally, more recently, the critique of the battle in the name of nuclear arms, which play a deterrent role, with conventional forces now having a role only in “testing” or “maneuver”; see the Gaullist conception of the nonbattle, and Guy Brossollet, *Essai sur la non-bataille* (Paris: Belin, 1975). The recent return to the notion of the battle cannot be explained simply by technological factors such as the development of tactical nuclear arms, but implies political considerations—it is upon these that the role assigned to the battle (or nonbattle) in war depends.
MOTH TO A FLAME
[542] On the fundamental differences between Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, see Rene Grousset, *The Empire of the Steppes,* trans. Naomi Walford (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 417–419.
[543] See *Armees etfiscalit’e dans le monde antique,* ed. A. Chastagnol, C. Nicolet, and H. van Effenterre (Paris: CNRS, 1977); this colloquium best covers the fiscal aspect but deals with the other two as well. The question of the distribution of land to soldiers and the families of soldiers comes up in every State and plays an essential role. In one particular form, it lay the foundation for fiefs and feudalism. But it already lay at the basis of “false fiefs” around the world, most notably of the *clews* and cleruchy in Greek civilization. Claire Preaux, *L’economie royale des Lagides* (Brussels: Ed. de la Fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, 1939), pp. 463ff.
[544] Clausewitz, *On War,* especially book 8, and the commentary on these three theses by Raymond Aron, *Penser la guerre,* vol. 1 (particularly pp. 139 ff., “Pourquoi les guerres de la deuxieme espece?”).
[545] Erich Ludendorff, *Der totale Krieg* (Munich: Ludendorff Verlag, 1935), notes that the evolution has been toward attributing more and more importance to the “people” and “domestic policies” in war, whereas Clausewitz still puts the emphasis on armies and foreign policy. This criticism is true overall, despite certain texts of Clausewitz. The same criticism is also made by Lenin and the Marxists (although they obviously have a totally different conception of the people and domestic policy than Ludendorff). Certain authors have convincingly demonstrated that the proletariat is as much of military origin, naval in particular, as of industrial origin; see, for example, Virilio, *Speed and Politics,* pp. 38, 40–41, 134–35.
[546] As John Ulric Nef shows, it was during the great period of “limited war” (1640–1740) that the phenomena of concentration, accumulation, and investment emerged—the same phenomena that were later to determine “total war.” See *War and Human Progress* (New York: Norton, 1968). The Napoleonic code of war represents a turning point that brought together the elements of total war: mobilization, transport, investment, information, etc.
[547] On this “transcending” of fascism, and of total war, and on the new point of inversion of Clausewitz’s formula, see Virilio’s entire analysis in *L’insecurit’e du terhtoire,* especially chapter 1.
[548] Guy Brossollet, *Essai sur la non-bataille,* pp. 15–16. The axiomatic notion of the “unspecified enemy” is already well developed in official and unofficial texts on national defense, on international law, and in the judicial or police spheres.
[549] The principal book in this respect is *Mitra-Varuna* (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) (it also contains the analysis of the “One-Eyed” and the “One-Armed” gods).
[550] The theme of the Binder-God and the magic knot has been the object of general studies in mythology, notably Mircea Eliade, *Images and Symbols,* trans. Philip Mairet (Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews, and McMeel, 1961), chapter 3. But these studies are ambiguous because they use a syncretic and archetypal method. Dumezil’s method, on the other hand, is differential: the theme of capture or of the bond only groups various data together under a differential trait, which is constituted precisely by political sovereignty. On the opposition between these two methods, one can refer to Edmond Ortigues, *Le discours et le symbole* (Paris: Aubier, 1962).
[552] Ibid., p. 150: “There are many ways of being a god of war, and Tiwaz defines one that is very badly expressed by the labels warrior god, god of combat.... Tiwaz is something else: the jurist of war, and at the same time a kind of diplomat” (the same applies for Mars).
-avery
[554] Ernst Junger, *The Glass Bees,* trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Mayer (New York: Noonday Press, 1960), p. 112 [translation modified to agree with the French translation cited by the authors].
[555] Marcel Detienne, *Les maitres de verite dans la Grece archaique* (Paris: Maspero, 1973), and “Le phalange, problemes et controverses,” in *Problemes de la guerre en Grece ancienne* (Civilisations et societes, no. 11), ed. Jean-Pierre Vernant (The Hague: Mouton, 1968). See also Jean-Pierre Vernant, *The Origins of Greek Thought* (Ithaca, N. Y: Cornell University Press, 1982).
[556] Jacques Harmand cites an “enterprise using extensive manpower exceptionally directed by a functionary, Ouni, under the Pharaoh Pepi I toward 1400 B.C.”; *La guerre antique* (Paris: PUF, 1973), p. 28. Even the military democracy Morgan described does not explain, but presupposes, an archaic State of the imperial type (the work of Detienne and Vernant establishes this). This imperial State itself functions first with jailers and police, and not warriors: see Dumezil, *Mitra-Varuna,* pp. 200–204.
[557] The idea itself of an Asiatic despotic formation appeared in the eighteenth century, notably in Montesquieu, but was used to describe an evolved state of the empires and corresponded to absolute monarchy. Entirely different is the viewpoint of Marx, who recreates the notion in order to define the archaic empires. The principal texts in this regard are Marx, *Grundrisse,* trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 471–514; Karl Wittfogel, *Oriental Despotism* (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957); and Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s preface to the first French edition, *Le despotisme oriental* (Paris: Minuit, 1964), which was surpressed in the second edition at Wittfogel’s request; Ferenc Tokei, *Essays on the Asiatic Mode of Production* (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1979); and the studies in CERM, *Sur le mode de production asiatique* (Paris: Ed. Sociales, 1969).
[558] Varron made a famous pun on *nexum* and *nee suumfit* (<verbatim>=</verbatim> the thing does not become the property of he who receives it). In effect, the *nexum* is a fundamental form of archaic Roman law, according to which it is not an accord between contracting parties that creates an obligation, but the borrower’s or donor’s word, in a magico-religious mode. This is not a contract *(mancipatio),* and it involves no buying-selling, even deferred, and no interest, although it seems to us that it may involve a kind of rent. See in particular Pierre Noailles, *Fas et Jus* (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1948); and Dumezil, who stresses the connection between the *nexum* and the magic bond, *Mitra-Varuna,* pp. 118–124.
[559] See the excavations and studies of James Mellaart, *Earliest Civilizations in the Near East* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965) and *Catal HuyukQievj* York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). The urbanist Jane Jacobs has drawn on this work in proposing an imperial model she calls “New Obsidian” (after the name of the lava used to make tools), which may go back to the beginning of Neolithic times, or even much further into the past. She stresses the “urban” origin of agriculture and the role of hybridizations occurring in the urban grain stocks: It is agriculture that presupposes the stock, and not the reverse. In an as yet unpublished study, Jean Robert analyzes Mellaart’s theses and Jacobs’s hypothesis, applying them to new perspectives *(D’ecoloniser Vespace).*
[560] Clastres, *Society against the State,* trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Urizen, 1977). We have seen that, according to Clastres, primitive war is one of the principal mechanisms warding off the State in that it maintains the opposition and dispersion of small segmentary groups. But also, from this viewpoint, primitive war remains subordinated to these preventive mechanisms and does not become autonomous as a machine, even when it comprises a specialized body.
[561] According to Griaznov, it was the sedentary farmers who went out on the steppe and became nomadic, during the Bronze Age: This is a case of a zigzag movement in evolution. See *The Ancient Civilization of Southern Siberia,* trans. James Hogarth (New York: Cowles, 1969), pp. 97–98, 131–133.
[562] Jean Robert develops this notion of an “inversion of signs and messages”: “In a first phase, information circulates principally from the periphery toward the center, but at a certain critical point, the town begins to emit, in the direction of the rural world, increasingly imperative messages”; the town becomes an exporter *(D’ecoloniser I’espace).*
[563] On Chinese towns and their subordination to the imperial principle, see Etienne Balazs, *Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy,* trans. H. M. Wright (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 410: “The social structures in both India and China automatically rejected the town and offered, as it were, refractory, substandard material to it. It was because society was well and truly frozen in a sort of irreducible system, a previous crystallization.”
[564] From all of these standpoints, Francois Chatelet questions the classical notion of the city-state and doubts that the Athenian city can be equated with any variety of State: “La Grece classique, la Raison, I’Etat,” in Alberto Asor Rosa et al., *En marge. L’Occident et ses “autres”,* (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1978). Islam was to confront analogous problems, as would Italy, Germany, and Flanders beginning in the eleventh century; in these cases, political power does not imply the State-form. An example is the community of Hanseatic towns, which lacked functionaries, an army, and even legal status. The town is always inside a network of towns, but, precisely, “the network of towns” does not coincide with “mosaic of States.” On all of these points, see the analyses of Francois Fourquet and Lion Murard, *Les equipements de pouvoir: ville, territoires et equipements collectifs* (Paris: 10/18, 1976), pp. 79–106.
[565] Claude Levi-Strauss, *Structural Anthropology,* trans Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoeft (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 150–151.
[566] Louis Berthe analyzes a specific example of the need for a “third village” to prevent the directional circuit from closing: “Aines et cadets, l’alliance et la hierarchie chez les Baduj,” *L’Homme,* vol. 5, no. 3/4 (July-December 1965), pp. 214–215.
[567] Fernand Braudel, *Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800,* trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 60), pp. 398,405,411. Emphasis added. (On town-State relations in the West, see pp. 396–406.) And as Braudel notes, one of the reasons for the victory of the States over the towns from the beginning of the fifteenth century was that the State alone had the ability fully to appropriate the war machine: by means of the territorial recruitment of men, material investment, the industrialization of war (it was more in the arms factories than in the pin factories that mass production and mechanical division appeared). The commercial towns, on the other hand, required wars of short duration, resorted to mercenaries, and were only able to encast the war machine.
[568] This theme is frequently developed by Samir Amin: “Since the theory of relations between different social formations cannot be an economistic one, international relations, which belong precisely to this context, cannot give rise to an economic theory.” *Unequal Development,* trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 146.
[569] See Jacques Lacarriere, *Les hommes ivres de Dieu* (Paris: Fayard, 1975).
[570] [TRANS: On capitalism repelling its limits, see Deleuze and Guattari, *Anti-Oedipus,* trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 230–232.]
[571] Samir Amin analyzes this particularity of the “peripheral formations” of the Third World and distinguishes two principal types, the oriental and African, and the American: “The Americas, Asia and the Arab world, and Black Africa were not transformed in the same way because they were not integrated at the same stage of capitalist development at the center and therefore did not fulfill the same function in development.” *Unequal Development, p.* 295. See also *Accumulation on a Worldscale,* vol. 2, trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), pp. 390–394. We shall see, however, that under certain conditions the center and the periphery are determined in such a way as to exchange their characteristics.
[572] Gaetan Pirou, *Economie liberale et economie dirigee,* vol. 1 (Paris: Ed. Sedes, 1946–1947), p. 117: “The productivity of the marginal worker determines not only that worker’s wage but that of all the others, in the same way that, when it was a question of commodities, the utility of the last bucket of water or last sack of wheat governed the value not only of that bucket or that sack but of all the other buckets and all the other sacks.” (Marginalism seeks to quantify the assemblage, when in fact all kinds of qualitative factors are at work in the evaluation of the “last.”)
[573] On the importance of the theory of evaluation and feeling out for marginalism, see Jacques Fradin’s critical discussion, *Les fondements logiques de la th’eorie neoclassique de I’echange* (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1976). For Marxists, there is also a groping evaluation, but one that can bear only on the quantity of socially necessary labor; Engels speaks of this precisely in the context of precapitalist societies. He invokes “a process of zig-zag approximation, often groping back and forth in the dark,” which is governed more or less by the “need for each person to have a rough idea of his costs” (one may wonder if this last part of the phrase does not reinstate a sort of marginalist criterion). Engels, “Supplement to Volume Three of Capital,” in Marx, *Capital,* vol. 3, trans. David Fernbach (New York: Vintage, 1981), p. 1036.