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[Pages:26]ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 18 (2014): 1-26 ____________________________________________________

Territory and Subjectivity: the Philosophical Nomadism of Deleuze and Canetti

Simone Aurora

Abstract

The paper's purpose consists in pointing out the importance of the notion of "territory", in its different accepted meanings, for the development of a theory and a practice of subjectivity both in deleuzean and canettian thought. Even though they start from very different perspectives and epistemic levels, they indeed produce similar philosophical effects, which strengthen their "common" view and the model of subjectivity they try to shape. More precisely, the paper focuses on the deleuzean triad of territorialisation, deterritorialisation, reterritorialisation, with regard to the role it plays in the forming of the subject and in connection with the fundamental deleuzean notion of difference; it furthermore concentrates on the characterization of the notion of territory in Canetti's work, also in the light of the mentioned deleuzean categories and with reference to the crucial canettian concept of transformation. Finally, the paper analyses both the political consequences of the "nomadic subjectivity" Deleuze and Canetti deal with and the critical and problematic aspects it involves.

1. Introduction

The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can be defined, like most post-war French philosophy, in terms of a philosophy of difference. On the other hand, Elias Canetti's thought can be considered as an extensive reflection on the concept of "transformation" [Verwandlung]. The aim of the present paper is to show that these two concepts, namely difference and transformation, display a close affinity and, accordingly, that the fundamental philosophical implications contained in the works of Deleuze (not forgetting the fundamental books written together with F?lix Guattari) and Canetti also reveal a strong kinship, although the relationship between the two authors is rarely direct or firsthand. Thus, I believe that is not only possible but also productive to attempt to trace a "map" of this common philosophical ground and to expound the structure and the mode of operation of the theoretical device that Deleuze and Canetti autonomously contribute to developing.

In a conversation with Catherine Back?s-Cl?ment, Deleuze and Guattari assert:

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We're looking for allies. We need allies. And we think these allies are already out there, that they've gone ahead without us, that there are lots of people who've had enough and are thinking, feeling, and working in similar directions: it's not a question of fashion but of a deeper "spirit of the age" informing converging projects in a wide range of fields (Deleuze 1995, 22/36).1

Elias Canetti plays the part of an ally within the "theatrum philosophicum" erected by Deleuze (and Guattari). This obviously does not mean that their different views can simply be flattened out. On the contrary, it means that converging projects, although independent, can strengthen a common philosophical and political move, namely that of a "philosophical nomadism". With respect to this move, the semantics of territory plays a very important role both in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and in the works of Elias Canetti.

2. Territory and Identity

A territory is a space delimited by stable borders by fixed confines, at least when taken in its basic and common sense, which distinguish an inside from an outside and, in this way, set up at least two separated areas of reality: one inside the borders and one outside, this latter probably belonging to another territory. It is therefore a conceptual device which produces order, working as a function which organizes sets of elements otherwise indeterminate and confused: given a dominion of elements, of whatever kind they might be, and marking fixed limits which become the territory's borders, a territory arranges these elements in a set "A", which are placed into groups which share a common feature and, another set ?A or B is distinguished when in contrast with the first set, this could be another territory or simply an unspecified and unorganized region of being. It is in this sense that a territory can be said to produce identity: every different territory marks a particular identity-set, labelling a welldefined group of elements.2

Basically, the logical structure of a territory therefore consists in marking borders using certain signs, which then form an inclusion-exclusion device and work according to a dialectic of recognition. This is true in the geopolitical sphere, where "territory" indicates a jurisdictional and administrative unity;3 in the embryological field, where "territory" defines a part of an embryo, which is composed of cells that stand out on the strength of their

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common properties, and finally even in ethological vocabulary, where "territory" indicates an area defended by individuals or groups of an animal species through the use of visual, chemical or acoustic signs.4 Yet, according to the views expressed by Deleuze and Guattari and Canetti, this logical-semiotic structure, namely the marking of boundaries using signs with the resulting production of an inclusion-exclusion mechanism, coincides with that of subjectivity. Subjectivity represents the first and principal form of territory.5

In the Abecedary, Deleuze claims that "territory is the domain of the having" and that it "has to do with property" (Deleuze 2004). The territory of a subject is namely represented by the region of being that it owns, by the domain over which it literally has power, and by the space inside the borders that define its identity. So, if we consider "territory" as a semiotic structure which delimits identities, and we accept that the basic and fundamental form of identity is represented by the subjective identity, we can claim that subjectivity is the outcome of the creation of a territory: it is the result of a territorial production.

The first tendency connected with a territory is the resolution to maintain it, to defend its boundaries. The second tendency is, to expand those boundaries as soon as is possible.6 The concept of territory, and thus of subjectivity, is therefore logically traversed both by a conservative self-preventing movement and by an aggressive expansive instinct, which as we shall see, relate it to the phenomenon of power.

In the opening lines of his 1960's book, Crowds and Power, which he explicitly considers as his most important work, Canetti writes that:

[T]here is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange (Canetti 1981, 15/13) .

Then, he further states that, in relation to this fear and tendency, "we are dealing here with a human propensity as deep-seated as it is alert and insidious; something which never leaves a man when he has once established the boundaries [Grenzen] of his personality" (Canetti 1981, 15/14 italics added). A few pages later, Canetti notices: "A man stands by himself on a secure

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and well defined spot, his every gesture asserting his right to keep others at a distance" (Canetti 1981, 17/16). He then adds,

[a]ll life, so far as he knows it, is laid out in distances?the house in which he shuts himself and his property, the positions he holds, the rank he desires?all these serve to create distances, to confirm and extend them (Canetti 1981, 18/16).

Twenty years later, in A Thousand Plateaus, written by Deleuze in "symbiosis" with Felix Guattari and considered by Deleuze himself as his most valuable work,7 the authors write, with an evident affinity with the analyses conducted by Canetti, that

[t]he territory is first of all the critical distance between two beings of the same species: Mark your distance. What is mine is first of all my distance; I possess only distances. Don't anybody touch me, I growl if anyone enters my territory, I put up placards (Deleuze, Guattari 1987, 319-320/393)

In this respect, they add, "it is a question of keeping at a distance the forces of chaos knocking at the door" (Deleuze, Guattari 1987, 320/393).

3. Territorial production and power effects

The production of a subject, insofar as it coincides with the making of a territory, entails both a conservative self-prevention and an aggressive expansive tendency. This is due to the fact that the subjectification process logically and necessarily generates power-effects.

In the perspectives expressed by Canetti and by the "philosophical pair" Deleuze and Guattari, the notion of power does not designate so much a fundamental notion of the modern political science but more a precise logical device. 8 As Philip Goodchild highlights, "[w]e may distinguish between two conceptions of power", as far as Deleuze is concerned, namely "a power of autoproduction, in which a relation causes itself, and a power of antiproduction, in which productive relations are prevented from forming" (Goodchild 1996, 73). To be more precise, these two distinctions do not represent two different sides of the same concept; indeed, they designate two clearly and absolutely separate concepts. Unfortunately, the English term "power" translates both the French words "puissance" and "pouvoir", which

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respectively correspond to the first (puissance) and second (pouvoir) meaning distinguished by Goodchild.9 However, in the following pages, the English word "power" will always be used as a translation for the French term "pouvoir". This concept basically designates, with regard to both Deleuze and Canetti, a reduction process. This subjugates the phenomenical variety to an identity principle and, in this way, presides over what stands outside the subject's borders. So, first, one must defend one's own territory, maintaining its stable perimeter, and second, one must expand it when possible, incorporating new spaces so as to avoid the potential dangers and instability that could derive from outside factors, and also to assume an always increasing capability of control over whatever is different. In its fundamental scheme, power is the reduction of difference to identity, of plurality to unity, of otherness to selfness, of movement to stability. In the preface to the English edition of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze affirms that generally "[w]e tend to subordinate difference to identity in order to think it" and "[w]e also have a tendency to subordinate it to resemblance" (Deleuze 1994, XV) to what is already known to us, namely to what resides in our territory. Further, in the same book, he proceeds by asking himself: "On what condition is difference traced or projected on to a flat space? Precisely", he answers, "when it has been forced into a previously established identity, when it has been placed on the slope of the identical which makes it reflect or desire identity, and necessarily takes it where identity wants it to go" (Deleuze 1994, 51/73). In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write that "whenever we can identify a well-defined segmented line", which we can associate with the frontiers of a territory, "we notice that it continues in another form, as a quantum flow" that we can instead relate to the unorganized multiplicity and to the undefined differences which lie beyond the limits of the territory. "And in every instance", they continue, "we can locate a `power centre' at the border between the two, defined not by an absolute exercise of power within its domain but by the relative adaptations and conversions it effects between the line and the flow" (Deleuze, Guattari 1987, 217/264). So, power is a logical device, which converts a flow into a line, differences into identities, land into territories. Power is then something dynamic, an apparatus which constantly turns the nomadic "language" of difference into identity-making territorial codes. Accordingly, territory is the metastable organization of such codified fluxes. It is metastable, because of the constantly operative coding activity of power centres, on the one hand, and of the outer permanent pressures on its

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boundaries, on the other hand. A territory is therefore never definitively closed, but is always committed to a closing process, to an activity of reconversion.

Canetti focuses on the strong relationship between the phenomenon of power and paranoiac psychosis, defining the latter as the ruler's disease and therefore, insofar every subject represents a centre of power of something afflicting every personal subject, although at different levels. "It is difficult", he notes indeed in "Crowds and Power",

to resist the suspicion that behind paranoia, as behind all power, lies the same profound urge: the desire to get other men out of the way so as to be the only one; or, in the milder, and indeed often admitted, form, to get others to help [one] become the only one (Canetti 1981, 462/549).

It is then clear why, according to Canetti, the basic and first form of power is the power of death, or at least the faculty to give death, and the survivor represents the archetypical model of power. Death represents both the highest expression and the extreme limit of the reduction process. Beyond death no further reduction is possible. The paranoiac is then the ruler and, to some extent, the personal subject, and

may be defined as one who uses every means to keep danger away from his person. Instead of challenging and confronting it and abiding the issue of a fight which might go against him, he seeks by circumspection and cunning to block its approach to him. He creates empty space all round him which he can survey, and he observes and assesses every sign of approaching danger (Canetti 1981, 231/273).

The greatest danger is represented by death and death, in turn, is also the strongest weapon in order to create emptiness, to produce distances. These two aspects coexist in the figure of the survivor:

The moment of survival is the moment of power. Horror at the sight of death turns into satisfaction that it is someone else who is dead. The dead man lies on the ground while the survivor stands. [...] the essence of the situation is that he feels unique [...] when we speak of the power which this moment gives him, we should never forget that it derives from his sense of uniqueness and from nothing else (Canetti 1981, 227/267).

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On the basis of these considerations, one can state that the phenomenon of power is something co-extensive with the subjectification process, it is something which always cooccurs with the creation of a territory and, accordingly, it is something all-pervasive and widespread. Hence, it is more appropriate to speak of powers and the effects of power rather than of Power, with a capital p.

This evidently links the reflections produced by Deleuze and Guattari and Canetti with the ones proposed by Michel Foucault in his analytics of power relations, even though they obviously do not coincide.10 However, in a talk given in 1974 (after the publication of AntiOedipus, where Deleuze and Guattari aim to shift the focus of "political philosophy" away from the concept of power onto that of desire) during a conference in Milan and now published with the title Two regimes of madness, Deleuze asserts that "[t]oday, we're not asking what the nature of power is, but rather, along with Foucault, how power exerts itself, where it takes shape, and why it is everywhere" (Deleuze 2007, 11/11).11 Foucault, for his part, frequently acknowledged, his well known proximity to Deleuze and, with regards to Canetti, he wrote this dedication on a copy of The Order of Things, which he sent to Canetti: "To Mister Canetti, to let him know what a pleasure it is for me to be his humble twin".12

So, territory is basically a semiotic structure ? what Deleuze and Guattari call a "regime of signs" ? and the reduction process of power is the logical tool through which a territory is established, preserved and expanded, therefore the regulating principle of the territory itself. It is then clear why one can define the analyses of powers produced by both Canetti and Deleuze and Guattari as semiotic and why, accordingly, the theme of language becomes, in this respect, of particular importance. Although the production of signs which mark a territory is not at all limited to linguistic formulations, as ethology, for instance, clearly reveals, it is however undeniable that language probably represents the most powerful semiotic system, and therefore one of the most efficient tools to create a territory. This is the reason why language plays a crucial role in the politics of subjectification. According to Canetti, language represents the main instrument to transmit power functions and to impose power relations. In this connection, he focuses in particular on the role of commands in their linguistic form. The original form of command is the flight-command. Flight is always, at

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least originally, a flight from death. In a power relation, he who has power is always the one that has the faculty to give death to others, to literally nullify them. In this sense, the command is always originally a flight command because it always reacts to a threat of death. Power at its core is always the threat of death and flight represents the only alternative to death.13

The oldest command? and it is far older than man ? is a death sentence, and it compels the victim to flee. We should remember this when we come to discuss human commands. Beneath all commands glints the harshness of the death sentence (Canetti 1981, 304/358).

Although command is always originally a death-command, it reveals itself mostly in a tamed and weakened form and relegates death to a final possibility. Death is the extrema ratio, the always delayed outcome of command.14 The domestication of the command consists of a conversion of the threat of death into a promise of life. Those who have power waive the death of the enemies and become the only guarantors of their life. The enemy becomes submissive, a slave, a son, and totally dependent on the ruler's care.15 As Canetti writes,

... a master feeds his slave or his dog and a mother her child. A creature which is subject to another habitually receives its food only from that other. No-one but their master feeds slaves or dogs; no-one else is under any obligation to feed them and actually no-one else ought to feed them. (A child, of course, cannot feed itself and must cling to its mother's breast) (Canetti 1981, 307/362).

Canetti closely relates paranoiac psychosis, power and language: "Perhaps", he writes, "the most marked trend in paranoia is that towards a complete seizing of the world through words, as though language were a fist and the world lay in it" (Canetti 1981, 452/521). Language is indeed a strong instrument to define identities, to create dialectics of recognition and exclusion, to produce the "stranger", which is simply someone who does not understand the subject's language, namely its territorial code. The fortuitous biographical and linguistic "nomadism" of Canetti, 16 assumes then a clear and aware philosophical and political meaning: the refusal of a territorial code, even of a mother language, in order to try to avoid any possible identification, any kind of cultural stabilisation, which would inhibit the possibility of transformation. Moreover, he chooses German as his own literary language; this is the language of the Nazis, of the Enemy, in order to be able to achieve the highest

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