Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Territory Is Not The Map - Place, Deleuze & Guattari & African Philosophy
The Territory Is Not The Map - Place, Deleuze & Guattari & African Philosophy
At the beginning of “1227: Treatise on in the face of a coercive nation-state, but rather
Nomadology—The War Machine” in A Thou- begins by considering the roots of the experi-
sand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix ence of territory.
Guattari contrast chess with Go in terms of the The concepts of the refrain and of nomadic
relation between the pieces and the kind of philosophy give us a clue to a way to rethink
space they create. “Chess,” they maintain, “is a African philosophy. The project of this essay is
game of state . . . chess pieces are coded; they to consider ways in which we might think of
have an internal nature and intrinsic properties African philosophy outside of the metaphors
from which their movements, situations, and of maps used by both modernist and also some
confrontations derive.”1 Go, on the other hand, postmodernist writers, the first to delineate and
has pieces that “are pellets, disks, simple arith- define area and establish ownership and citi-
metic units, and have only an anonymous, col- zenship, the second to clear space and allow for
lective, or third-person function: ‘It’ makes a possibilities. The first project of mapping,
move.” Chess has a “milieu of interiority,” in which has been the explicit or implicit project
other words, it takes its set of meanings from of the majority of African philosophy, leaves
the previously defined “essence” of each piece. African philosophy forever at the edge of
The space it creates is striated. Go, on the other Western thought, defining its territory by that
hand, has a milieu of exteriority. The space in already claimed. The second project, meant to
Go is smooth. It is a war without battle lines, resist that sense of entitlement, ends up avoid-
without boundaries, without aim or destina- ing discussions of subjectivity even as it tries to
tion, without departure or arrival. Chess avoid any hint of essentialism. We find out
“codes and decodes space,” while Go “pro- what we might choose, at the expense of know-
ceeds altogether differently, territorializing or ing what we do choose. The result in the first
deterritorializing it (make the outside a terri- case is a map that has little legitimacy, and in
tory in space, consolidate that territory by con- the second a map that has little use. The alter-
struction of a second, adjacent territory. . .).” native, I would like to suggest, is to rethink
Deleuze and Guattari here follow in the both the metaphysical and the postmodern ad-
theme of other plateaus, tracing nomadic diction to the notion of space, and instead sug-
subjectivities and exploring the contingent, gest that the concept of place holds more hope.
multifarious ways they come into themselves. The title to this essay is an obvious play on
The Treatise on Nomadology, while perhaps words. “The map is not the territory” is a com-
the most famous plateau, focuses on the con- mon expression that indicates the limits of rep-
trast between the “interiority,” or essentialism resentation. It suggests that we can never fully
of the State versus the “exteriority” or nomadic nor properly represent or capture the world.
qualities of the war machine. But this is “set Jorge Luis Borges imagines a map that is a 1:1
up” (to the extent that anything is really set up representation of the territory it is supposed to
for Deleuze and Guattari) by the plateau imme- represent.2 Of course, if we broaden our con-
diately preceding, “1837: Of the Refrain.” This ception of a map, we can imagine maps that are
plateau does not concern the social-philosoph- much larger than the territory—“maps” of sub-
ical problems of the emergence of subjectivity atomic reactions, the genome, and so forth.
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
394
Guattari could be part of the conversation as one sees it (sometimes, as in an Arctic storm,
about place and African philosophy. How, one cannot discern directional markers of any
then, is it possible? Put another way, as our sec- kind, and yet a native to the region knows how to
ond question: What is a place? get to places). . . . One finds one’s bearings
where one is , that is, in the very place, the local
Now We Are At Home. absolute one occupies—without counting.13
the nature of place, but the place(s) from which The nomad continually deterritorializes, in
10
philosophy can and does come. Where, that this person re-produces the environment at
placially, is African philosophy located? the same time as he or she is produced by it.
Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus Nomad “make the desert no less than they are
11
proves useful for this task. Two ways emerge made by it” (382). This is demonstrated most
from that work for thinking about place—the effectively by the second entry-point to
rel at ive ly w e ll- k n ow n “ Tr e a t i s e on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of place in the
Nomadology,” and the lesser known idea of the preceding plateau, “1827—Of the Refrain.”
refrain. The refrain is an auditory notion, a repetition
The nomad traverses a territory, not as one that determines a territory. The refrain is a song
who is traveling between different points or to- that organizes and fends off chaos, that draws
ward destinations, but as one who “relays” be- from the earth a set of contingent meanings
tween intermediate points. The nomad is not that lead to identity.
the migrant, who goes from one point to the “From chaos, Milieus and Rhythms are
12
next, but rather one whose space is distributed born” (313). The milieu is a codification of
openly and indefinitely. The place of the no- repetitions, a limitation and rhythmatization
mad, then, is not a point but a trajectory and a on the chaos (which itself is the milieu of all
region. The nomad’s space is such that they do milieus). When we are at home, we have a set
not need to orient themselves by means of of rhythms that define a place as home, and in
fixed land-points: fact when we are away from home, we often
Here one moves not only in accordance with find ourselves setting up familiar rhythms to
cardinal directions or geometrically determined make a new place into home. There are
vectors but in a “polyvocality of directions”— codes—items are placed in a way meaningful
directions that are as much heard as seen, and in to those that know a place as home, and only
any case not merely posited as exigencies of partially accessible (if at all) by others. But
theory. On the high sea, or in the windswept these codes are never fixed; if they were, this
desert, one listens to direction, feels it, as much would just be an exercise in structuralism.
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
396
What is place? Deleuze and Guattari outline moves us in ways that visuality, and particu-
a “new classification system” to account for larly color, do not.
the “machine” that territorializes. This classifi- The refrain is a repetition, the song of the
cation system is one of different sorts of re- bird repeated, but not verbatim. Repetition
frains: necessarily contains difference,20 yet what is
1. Milieu refrains, which have at least two important is its resonance, the sympathetic vi-
parts, one of which answers the other; brations that occur in a territory that give it life.
2. Natal refrains, or refrains of the territory, The refrain is a catalyst, a to-and-fro move-
“where the part is related to the whole, to an ment. It “fabricates time” by its rhythm. “The
immense refrain of the earth.” These refrains refrain remains a formula evoking a character
mark the disjunction between the earth and the or landscape” (349). In other words, place is
territory (lullabies, drinking songs, hunting created through the repetitions in which we do
songs, work songs, military songs); not simply react to the interplay of meanings of
3. Folk and popular refrains, “tied to an im- the objects that create territory, but actively
mense song of the people, according to vari- voice a position in the midst of the
able relations of crowd individuations that si- overdetermination that territory affords.
multaneously bring into play affects and Wise characterizes the choice that the re-
nations (the Polish, German, Magyar, or Ro- frain allows as “habit.” Habit is the sort of repe-
manian, but also the Pathetic, Panicked, tition that admits variation (indeed, requires
Vengeful, etc.)”; it), but through which we are recognized for
4. Molecularized refrains—the sea and the who we are. Habit is not necessarily simply a
wind, which are tied to the Cosmic refrain; function of individual will—there are habits
5. Cosmic refrain. This final refrain should that are cultural, as well as individual. These
not be seen as transcendence. Perhaps the best habits, taken together, are who we are. There is
example of this is one which ends the plateau: no “core,” no essence of self apart from the
“In Schumann, a whole learned labor, at once habits we are. “There is no fixed self, only the
21
rythmic, harmonic, and melodic, has this sober habit of looking for one.” Yet, habits are not
and simple result: deterritorialize the refrain. just blind instincts. They are reflective conti-
Produce a deterritorialized refrain as the final nuities, the same produced differently, con-
end of music, release it in the Cosmos—that is tainers for a self that is nothing without them.
more important than building a new system” Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth century mys-
(350). tic, speaks of a will to “power, color, and vir-
22
These refrains are not particularly milieus, tue” that produces Gefassete, a German neol-
nor are they territories. They are the rope that ogism that combines Gefaß, a container, with
23
ties together sets of territories and milieus to- fassen, to grasp. The container is produced
gether. It is significant that the “refrain” is an from the inside, and exists as a temporary (one
auditory metaphor. Deleuze and Guattari con- might say, nomadic) representation of the self.
sider the visual metaphor, as used in visual art, To the extent that this container ossifies, what
and find it limited (347–48). The refrain is is contained is lost. It will move on, one way or
“eminently sonorous.” They argue that another. The question is, whether the succes-
visuality, and particularly color, tends to con- sive containers can keep up.
nect too closely to the territory with which it is The place is not, then, a home in a
identified or which it marks. Sound does not Heideggerian sense, one which we yearn for,
signify or communicate values, but rather it from which we are unheimlich. Our wandering
“invades us, impels us, drags us, transpierces is not the condition of being lost; rather, being
us. It takes leave of the earth, as much in order still is being lost. Wandering is our human con-
to drop us into a black hole as to open us up to a dition, and movement binds our territory to-
cosmos. It makes us want to die” (348). Sound gether in a way that remaining stationary can-
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
398
space established by modernist maps to orient thinkers from around the world, and may ac-
itself (as this space is abstract, defensive, and count for the suspicion toward the lack of
always already looks to the areas on the map al- textual tradition that most people see within
ready claimed), and it should not look to place African history. If we need to legitimate the
as defined statically, a kind of “home” in a nos- concepts by finding their roots, by thinking
talgic or hopeful sense. “The map is not the ter- “arboreally,” to use a Deleuzian metaphor, we
ritory” suggests that the representation is not will naturally be concerned if those roots are
identical to that which it represents. Its inver- unavailable. African philosophy has found
sion, as has already been mentioned, suggests text-substitutes, or text-analogues, to make up
that territory, that which is earned by nomadic for this. So, collective oral tradition, sages, an
action within a set of milieus, cannot be repre- “African mind” or “African consciousness,” a
sented by a map. Maps, at least in their usual unique cultural or linguistic history have all
understanding, make the world abstract. The been used to substitute for the seeming lack of
abstract categories come first—lines of longi- textuality. This, though, just plays the space
tude and latitude, scales and conventions. Into game.
these abstractions the earth fits. The earth is This place, the set of nomadic vectors that
governed by the abstractions. The nomad, the describe this place, cannot easily be given in a
bird singing the refrain, the piece in Go, none list. The point is not to try to come up with a
of these are governed by abstractions. All these new description, as if we were going to try to
are irreducibly concrete, yet not as particulars. define the robin as a bird that has this territory.
Abstractions, then, become the carcasses (or But perhaps what is more useful is to think
perhaps more in the spirit of territory markers, about where the field has been, where it has as-
the excrement) of thought, not thought itself. serted its territory, deterritorialized and
Maps tell us who is in and who is out, who reterritorialized, and what kind of refrains
owns what and whose laws one must obey. emerge. I am not suggesting that we just need
Deleuze, if he has maps at all (and some writers to give an account of the battles engaged in and
do talk about maps in this context, but in a radi- the entitlements claimed. Thinking about phi-
cally different fashion, much closer to how I losophy in Africa needs to be more than giving
24
am talking about the notion of place), is not a history (and by implication a justification) of
concerned about ownership, but about ac- philosophy in Africa. History
counting for the ways in which concepts might is always written from the sedentary point of
emerge, and the way one might understand view and in the name of a unitary State appara-
one’s world given a set of contingent actions. tus, at least a possible one, even when the topic
In this, perhaps unexpectedly, Deleuze and is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology,
Guattari come close to Gadamer. While the opposite of a history. (23)
Gadamer’s notion of tradition would not carry
much weight for them, and there would be little History becomes another map, another way
sympathy for his lingering hints of transcen- of charting and defending space and determin-
dence, the idea of contingent understanding ing citizenship. Deleuze and Guattari’s point is
based on local conditions begins to look close that this preoccupation, if left as the sole task of
to Gadamer’s concerns. philosophy, actually stands against generating
So where is this place? When African phi- concepts that are the life-blood of philosophy.
losophy endeavors to set its concepts free into It should be noted that Deleuze and Guattari
the Cosmos, those concepts that emerge from never say that striated space (chess, arboreal
25
its milieus and defines its (temporary) terri- thought) ought to be forsaken or ignored, but
tory, it has for the most part started with the rather that smooth space (nomadology, go,
concepts and tried to find their origins. This is rhizomatic thought) needs to be present, or we
not so different than the impulse of many have lost what it is to do philosophy.
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
400
The argument I have made to this point has 3. The habits that are the milieu, or the pro-
tried to focus on the disruptive, nomadic nature cess of deterritorializing and reterritorializing,
of African philosophy. I have not given an ac- must command more attention. This would
count that has a teleology—we are not at the suggest a new theory of tradition, one that does
point of having “won” a space on a map, and not rely on identification and recovery, but
can now go about writing the kind of history rather on recognizing the habits that have lived
that victors write. If we take seriously this no- on. In this sense Gyekye’s admonition that tra-
tion that philosophy reflecting on Africa must dition is adopted by the daughter generation
be about exteriority rather than interiority, how rather than handed down by the parent genera-
29
does this affect the kinds of projects worth do- tion is apt. While he continues to try to
ing? essentialize tradition, at least he has recog-
1. For one thing, the search for the “African nized that dealing with the current ways that
identity” or the “African concept of the per- we “mark our territory” is the entry point to Af-
son” would become a dead end. Didier rican philosophy that can treat Africans as per-
Kaphagawani, in a posthumously published sons rather than as cultural or anthropological
essay critiquing some African concepts of the curiosities.
person, takes issue with trying to use 4. Boniface Abanuka gives an excellent ex-
communalism as a metaphysical guarantor of ample of how African experience can be
26
African personhood. Communalism, he ar- reterritorialized, in his discussion of ances-
30
gues, is a dynamic feature of the actions of Af- tors. Unlike Kwame Gyekye, who regards
ricans themselves, and is therefore talk of ancestors as an unnecessary and per-
not an ontologically stable entity. It is a collabo-
haps harmful conservative force in African so-
31
rative life-world which brings into sociation
ciety, Abanuka tries to see this as a kind of re-
forces, meanings, and agents of varying gender, frain that produces territory from chaos. He
age, and influence to construct their space, their does not take it in metaphysical terms (“do an-
habitus.27 cestors exist or not?”), but rather addresses the
question of how to deal with the exigencies of
Despite his use of “space” where it seems place life, not so that the individual slavishly follows
would be more appropriate (habitus is the the details of the ancestor’s example, but so
place we find ourselves in, not the space of that the individual can creatively deal with new
possibilities), his point is well taken, and could circumstances. The good things that come to
be extended. Personal identity is not about in- the community come through the creative ac-
teriority, nor is it about mapping the terrain in tions of individuals, and the example of the an-
such a way that the African “self” can be told cestors shows just what could be the case,
apart from other selves. Instead, the first task is rather than simply holding the individual to a
to identify the refrains Africans use to create rigid set of societal norms.
home, and to establish territory. Ancestors, then, do not simply hand down
2. Following on Kaphagawani’s question- rigid laws, and they are not simply a conserva-
ing of the communal as the basis for the Afri- tive force on society. Abanuka comes very
can sense of self, we might take the issue fur- close to Deleuze and Guattari’s argument by
ther: what place does the individual have in the recognizing the contingent and creative aspect
public realm in African society? Hannah of ancestors. Far from being retrogressive, he
Arendt argues that the polis is the model of the shows that the ancestors are a kind of refrain,
28
public realm. This suggests a specifically one that breaks apart and reconfigures itself,
Greek model for human interaction, which and contributes to the territory.
may well not apply to African life. What place 5. As has already been mentioned, the place
is established by collective action in (both tra- “Africa” is the answer to a set of questions.
ditional and modern) African society? These questions are worth raising. Mudimbe
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
402
10. Theories of tradition and modernity History has always dismissed the nomads.
(and for that matter, postmodernity) abound, (394)
usually as map lines of demarcation between Success has been closely circumscribed by
preconceptual, unreflective, uncreative “Afri- Western standards—success in technology,
for instance, or in the stability of the State ap-
can” thought and truly conceptual, reflective,
paratus. But we philosophical nomads may
and creative “Western” thought. Nomadic find different ways of understanding success,
thought would turn this on its head. Deleuze not totally unrelated to these standards but also
and Guattari: not beholden to the historical accounts that
write out nomads, and Africa, by definition.
It is true that the nomads have no history; they
Kwame Gyekye, in Tradition and Modernity,
only have a geography. And the defeat of the no-
mads was such, so complete, that history is one
contributes to this rethinking by pointing out
with the triumph of States. We have witnessed,
the ways in which tradition and modernity are
as a result, a generalized critique dismissing the not so hermetically sealed, indeed the ways in
nomads as incapable of any innovation, whether which they continue to require each other to
technological or metallurgical, political or operate.
metaphysical. Historians . . . consider the no- These suggestions are by no means meant to
mads a pitiable segment of humanity that under- be exhaustive, but suggestive. Once the tools
stands nothing: not technology, to which it sup- are found to examine what it is to do philoso-
posedly remained indifferent; not agriculture, phy in this place, we may well be able to chart
not the cities and States it destroyed or con- (yes, even map) a new course, one that does not
quered. It is difficult to see, however, how the rely on abstractions, assertions, or defensive-
nomads could have triumphed in war if they did ness, but rather can work from the phenomena
33
not possess strong metallurgical capabilities. . . . and conversations that present themselves.
ENDNOTES
1. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Pla- 9. A sample of a few recent works would include Marc
teaus: Capitalism and Schizophreniz, trans. Brain Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (London:
Press, 1988), p. 353. Henceforth references to this Verso, 1995); Robert Harbison, Thirteen Ways: The-
work will appear in the text in parentheses. oretical Investigations in Architecture (Cambridge:
2. Jorge Luis Borges, “Of Exactitude in Science,” in MIT Press, 1997); Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Lo-
Borges, Collected Fictions (New York: Viking Press, cal: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society (New
1998). York: The New Press, 1997); Jeffrey Malpas, Place
3. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philoso- and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cam-
phy? trans. Hugh tomlinson and Graham Burchell bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jeffrey
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Walsh, “The Value of Place Meaning: Practical Ap-
4. Ibid., pp. 87–88. plications for the Future.” Parks & Recreation 35
5. Ibid., p. 93. (August 2000): 42-51; David Seamon and Robert
6. Ibid. Mugerauer, Dwelling, Place and Environment: To-
7. John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections (Cam- ward a Phenomenology of Person and World (New
bridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 40. York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
8. Edward Casey, Getting Back Into Place 10. I have written about this question in connection with
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); The Derrida. See my “Debt and Duty: Kant, Derrida, and
Fate Of Place (Berkeley: University of California African Philosophy,” Janus Head (Winter 2001):
Press, 1997). 109–24.
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
404