See also
- Accelerationism
- Empire
- Fleet in being, a naval example of a "vector of deterritorialization", according to Deleuze & Guattari quoting Paul Virilio
- Social alienation
In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the process of reterritorialization .
The idea was developed and proposed in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. For instance, in Anti-Oedipus , they observe that the understanding of the psyche was revolutionized by Sigmund Freud's concepts of libido and polymorphous perversity, and thus the psyche was initially deterritorialized, but he then conceptualized a new territory, the Oedipus complex, an understanding of tension in the psyche that is in favor of repression, thus reterritorializing it. They also observed that capitalism is "the movement of social production that goes to the very extremes of its deterritorialization", and describe it as "the new massive deterritorialization, the conjunction of deterritorialized flows".
The idea has been applied to describe the shifting of social, cultural, economic and political practices, as well as of people, objects, languages, traditions and beliefs in relation to their respective originating bodies. Some theorists have adopted a literal understanding of the word, applying it to geographical territories and their respective relations.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari note that deterritorialization and reterritorialization occur simultaneously. The function of deterritorialization is defined as "the movement by which one leaves a territory", also known as a "line of flight", but deterritorialization also "constitutes and extends" the territory itself. In A Thousand Plateaus , the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia , they distinguish between relative and an absolute deterritorialization. Relative deterritorialization is always accompanied by reterritorialization, while positive absolute deterritorialization is more akin to the construction of a "plane of immanence", akin to Spinoza's ontological constitution of the world. There is also a negative absolute deterritorialization, for example in the subjectivation process which is described as a construction of "the face" and an establishing of "faciality".
Mediatization works as a preferential source of deterritorialization, while it becomes a catalyser of other sources of deterritorialization (migrations, tourism, vast shopping centres, and economical transformations). As Tomlinson points out, [1] mediatization is absolutely omnipresent in everyday contemporary cultural experiences, it therefore appears as clearly decisive in deterritorialized cultural experience. The aforementioned experience implies opening up to the world and amplifying cultural horizons through the globalized mass media. This means that globalization transforms the relation between the places where we live and our cultural activities, experiences and identities. Paradoxically, deterritorialization also includes reterritorialized manifestations, which García Canclini defines as "certain relative, partial territorial relocalizations of old and new symbolic productions". [2] According to the concept of glocalization proposed by Robertson, deterritorialization and reterritorialization constitute both sides of the same coin of cultural globalization. [3] Deterritorialization speaks of the loss of the "natural" relation between culture and the social and geographic territories, and describes a deep transformation of the link between our everyday cultural experiences and our configuration as preferably local beings. As Giddens argues, "the very tissue of spatial experience alters, conjoining proximity and distance in ways that have few close parallels in prior ages". Nevertheless, it is very important not to interpret the deterritorialization of localized cultural experiences as an impoverishment of cultural interaction, but as a transformation produced by the impact the growing cultural transnational connections have on the local realm, which means that deterritorialization generates a relativization and a transformation of local cultural experiences, whether it is from the local event itself or by the projection of symbolical shapes from the local event. [4]
Although the process of across-boundaries flow was imbalanced, it cannot be denied that it has profound influence on politics, economics, and culture from every dimension. Although there were imbalanced power presences in different nations, it is undeniable that people will gradually realize that in addition to their own lives around are mutually implicated in the distant shore, but also to reconcile the impact between their lives around and the distant side. That is, the flow process of beyond the boundaries not only the representatives of strengthening interdependence, but also representatives that they both have the cognitive of globalization. It formed an easily comprehensive characteristics about "superterritorial" and "transworld". In other words, the original divide in the territorial boundaries between them have lost some authority, what is the main phenomenon of deterritorialization. [5] Therefore, no matter from what angle to explore globalization, deterritorialization has been a general consensus. [6]
The word "deterritorialization" may have different meanings. Tomlinson had pointed out that many scholars use the vocabulary of deterritorialization to explain the process of globalization, however, there are still some scholars who prefer the use of related words, such as "delocalization" or "displacement". [7] It emphasized different point in the use of different terms, but basically we can understand the meaning of these words that is to understand the transformation between local and cultures of the global modernity. In the text of Tomlinson, however, we found that he uses "deterritorialization" to explain the phenomenon instead of using "delocalization". But we can unearth that "deterritorialization" was more focused on liberating the people from the "local", is a process which no longer just only affected by neighborhood and familiar local, but also deeply influenced by the distant place.
Sociologist Anthony Giddens has defined modernity in terms of an experience of 'distanciation', in which familiar, local environments are interlaced with distant forces as a result of globalization. [8] He has argued that related perceptions of "displacement" (and estrangement from the local community) may be mitigated by global media, which allow some broader experience of community. [8]
However, communication technology may act not only to fill the field of local cultural significance and identity which corroded by deterritorialization, but also to establish global cultural politics. Politics of deterritorialization and the displacement of sociological will lead the struggle between state and nation. One important new feature of global cultural politics, tied to the disjunctive relationships among the various landscapes which proposed by Appadurai, is that state and nation are at each other's throats, and the hyphen that links them is now less an icon of conjuncture than an index of disjuncture.
When referring to culture, anthropologists use the term deterritorialized to refer to a weakening of ties between culture and place. This means the removal of cultural subjects and objects from a certain location in space and time. [9] It implies that certain cultural aspects tend to transcend specific territorial boundaries in a world that consists of things fundamentally in motion.
In the context of cultural globalization, Hernandez argues that deterritorialization is a cultural feature developed by the "mediatization, migration, and commodification which characterize globalized modernity". [10]
According to the works of Arjun Appadurai, the cultural distancing from the locality is intensified when people are able to expand and alter their imagination through the mediatization of alien cultural conditions, making the culture of remote origin one of a familiar material. That makes it difficult for a local entity to sustain and retain its own local cultural identity, which also affects the national identity of the region. [11] [12] Appadurai writes in his 1990 essay "Disjuncture and Difference" that:
Deterritorialization, in general, is one of the central forces of the modern world because it brings laboring populations in to the lower-class sectors and spaces of relatively wealthy societies, while sometimes creating exaggerated and intensified senses of criticism or attachment to politics in the home state. Deterritorialization, whether of Hindus, Sikhs, Palestinians, or Ukrainians, is now at the core of a variety of global fundamentalisms, including Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism. In the Hindu case, for example, it is clear that the overseas movement of Indians has been exploited by a variety of interests both within and outside India to create a complicated network of finances and religious identifications, by which the problem of cultural reproduction for Hindus abroad has become tied to the politics of Hindu fundamentalism at home. At the same time, deterritorialization creates new markets for film companies, art impressions, and travel agencies, which thrive on the end of the deterritorialized population for contact with its homeland. Naturally, these invented homelands, which constitute the mediascapes of deterritorialized groups, can often become sufficiently fantastic and one-sided that they provide the material for new ideoscapes in which ethnic conflicts can begin to erupt. [12]
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, and is best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Schizoanalysis is a set of theories and techniques developed by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, first expounded in their book Anti-Oedipus (1972) and continued in their follow-up work, A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
Arjun Appadurai is an Indian-American anthropologist recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation-states and globalization. He is the former University of Chicago professor of anthropology and South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Humanities Dean of the University of Chicago, director of the city center and globalization at Yale University, and the Education and Human Development Studies professor at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture.
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. While the first volume, Anti-Oedipus (1972), was a critique of contemporary uses of psychoanalysis and Marxism, A Thousand Plateaus was developed as an experimental work of philosophy covering a far wider range of topics, serving as a "positive exercise" in what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as rhizomatic thought.
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second being A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
Reterritorialization is the restructuring of a place or territory that has experienced deterritorialization. Deterritorialization is a term created by Deleuze and Guattari in their philosophical project Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–1980). They distinguished that relative deterritorialization is always accompanied by reterritorialization. It is the design of the new power. For example, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, and after the Spanish deterritorialized by eliminating the symbols of the Aztecs' beliefs and rituals, the Spanish then reterritorialized by putting up their own beliefs and rituals. This form of propaganda established their takeover of the land. Propaganda is an attempt to reterritorialize by influencing people's ideas through information distributed on a large scale. For example, during World War I, the U.S. put up posters everywhere to encourage young men to join the military and fight.
Affect is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields.
Minority is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their books Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and elsewhere. In these texts, they criticize the concept of "majority". For Deleuze and Guattari, "becoming-minor(itarian)" is primarily an ethical action, one of the becomings one is affected by when avoiding "becoming-fascist". They argued further that the concept of a "people", when invoked by subordinate groups or those aligned with them, always refers to a minority, whatever its numerical power might be.
Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus (1972).
Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a serial composed of two volumes, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. It was written by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, during the May 1968, a period of civil unrest in France.
A rhizome is a concept in post-structuralism describing a nonlinear network. It appears in the work of French theorists Deleuze and Guattari, who used the term in their book A Thousand Plateaus to refer to networks that establish "connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles" with no apparent order or coherency. A rhizome is purely a network of multiplicities that are not arborescent with properties similar to lattices. Deleuze referred to it as extending from his concept of an "image of thought" that he had previously discussed in Difference and Repetition.
A line of flight or a line of escape is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It describes one out of three lines forming what Deleuze and Guattari call assemblages, and serves as a factor in an assemblage that ultimately allows it to change and adapt to said changes, which can be associated with new sociological, political and psychological factors. Translator Brian Massumi notes that in French, "Fuite covers not only the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and disappearing into the distance. It has no relation to flying."
Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a French psychoanalyst and political activist, wrote a number of works together.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi is an Italian Marxist philosopher, theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. Berardi has written over two dozen published books, as well as a number of essays and speeches.
Cultural homogenization is an aspect of cultural globalization, listed as one of its main characteristics, and refers to the reduction in cultural diversity through the popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols—not only physical objects but customs, ideas and values. David E. O'Connor defines it as "the process by which local cultures are transformed or absorbed by a dominant outside culture". Cultural homogenization has been called "perhaps the most widely discussed hallmark of global culture". In theory, homogenization could work in the breakdown of cultural barriers and the global adoption of a single culture.
Maurizio Lazzarato is an Italian sociologist and philosopher, residing in Paris, France. In the 1970s, he was an activist in the workers' movement in Italy. Lazzarato was a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Multitudes. He is a researcher at Matisse/CNRS, Pantheon-Sorbonne University, and a member of the International College of Philosophy in Paris.
In semiotics, signified and signifier are the two main components of a sign, where signified is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and signifier which is the "plane of expression" or the observable aspects of the sign itself. The idea was first proposed in the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of semiotics.
Global cultural flow involves the flow of people, artifacts, and ideas across national boundaries as result of globalization. Global cultural flows can be observed in five interdependent 'Landscapes', or dimensions, that distinguish the fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics in the global cultural economy.
Assemblage is a philosophical approach for studying the ontological diversity of agency, which means redistributing the capacity to act from an individual to a socio-material network of people, things, and narratives. Also known as assemblage theory or assemblage thinking, this philosophical approach frames social complexity through fluidity, exchangeability, and their connectivity. Its central thesis is that people do not act exclusively by themselves, and instead human action requires complex socio-material interdependencies.