A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy by Henry Somers-Hall Jeffrey A. Bell

Author:Henry Somers-Hall,Jeffrey A. Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Chapter 9

Micropolitics and Segmentarity

Eugene W. Holland

Few plateaus demonstrate the Deleuzian principle of difference in repetition more than the ‘Micropolitics and Segmentarity’ plateau, which appears directly after the ‘Three Novellas’ plateau in the middle of A Thousand Plateaus. Not only do these two plateaus treat many of the same themes – notably the three kinds of lines: lines of rigid segmentarity, lines of supple segmentation and lines of flight – but they also trace the same trajectory, moving from an exposition of the three lines to a discussion of their dangers. Yet this very repetition serves to highlight a key difference: the displacement from a focus on the personal, the existential and the literary in the preceding plateau (‘lines of writing conjugate[d] with other lines, life lines’ [ATP 194]), to a focus on the social, the political and the anthropological in ‘Micropolitics and Segmentarity’.

In earlier plateaus, segmentation was generally presented as a synonym for stratification (or as a mode of stratification), and, more importantly, as a characteristic feature of the passional-subjective, authoritarian post-signifying regime of signs that distinguishes the post-signifying regime from the despotic, signifying regime of signs:

signifiance and subjectification are semiotic systems that are entirely distinct in their principles and have different regimes (circular irradiation versus segmentary linearity) and different apparatuses of power (despotic generalised slavery versus authoritarian contract-proceeding). (ATP 181–2)

In contrast with a generalised slavery under the direct command of the despot-god, passional subjectification operates with the face of God averted, so that the subject’s line-of-flight away from it now takes on a positive value and the linear, segmented form of a series of ‘proceedings’: ‘[the] relation to God is passional and authoritative rather than despotic and signifying; he anticipates and detects the powers [puissances] of the future rather than applying past and present powers [pouvoirs]’ (ATP 124). The line-of-flight now operates ‘by the linear and temporal succession of finite [segmented] proceedings’ (ATP 120), rather than merely jumping from point to point on the concentric circles surrounding the despot. The introduction in A Thousand Plateaus of this fourth regime of signs (these regimes being roughly comparable to the three modes of libidinal production presented in Anti-Oedipus) contributes to the wholesale transformation of Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of fascism, as we will see towards the end of this chapter: this explains the date of the ‘Micropolitics and Segmentarity’ plateau (1933), which marks the moment when Hitler’s Nazi war machine finally succeeded in taking over the German state apparatus and became macropolitical. But the development of the sociological and anthropological side of the concept of segmentarity also contributes crucially to what may be the most important, explicitly political new concept in all of A Thousand Plateaus: micropolitics. In addition to examining some of the sources for this concept, this chapter will outline the analysis of power dynamics it entails, and demonstrate its relevance for events such as May ’68 and the Occupy movement. In later plateaus, the analyses of lines and flows presented in ‘Micropolitics and Segmentarity’ enable Deleuze and Guattari

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