The Israeli Military Reads Deleuze and Guattari
This article is certainly one of the most bizarre I have ever read. I could almost quote the entire piece, but for the moment, I'll restrain myself to just, "We combine theory and practice. We can read, but we know as well how to build and destroy, and sometimes kill." I could read this article 200 times and not tell whether it is a joke or not. For those of you more versed in post-structuralism, what do you think?
posted by Robot at 2:01 AM
6 Comments:
Mike, it's great to know that the tides of life, so powerful and so far-reaching, have not carried you from our beloved Huffy Crew shores.
I imagine, however, contrary to what you say, that those very people upon whom I heaped my vitriol would probably merely scratch their heads at this article (excepting perhaps Hitchens), but agree more or less with the argument of the article stripped of its postmodern garb. In other words, they ain't got nothin' against "ruthless and unconventional war techniques." When conservatives talk of postmodernism, they really don't know what they're talking about, as they usually assign the term "postmodern" to ideas like mediatization (perhaps have heard of Baudrillard's thesis about the first Gulf War, but without understanding that his criticisms [if he is even capable of critique] were against ALL media portrayals, liberal, radical, conservative, or otherwise) and concepts like "war without civilian casualties," indeed any sort of just war theories at all. In other words, as in most political jargon, the term is introduced in order to malign whatever it is the authors don't like, regardless of its actual meaning.
In reality, postmodernism and the War on Terror have everything to do with each other, but conservatives assume "postmodern" means any number of things, including "moral relativism" (in fact it means largely what they believe, in the predetermined goodness of some ethnocentrically conceived political party), "socialism" (ha!), or "disbelief of fact" (in which case it is useful to remember the famous Bush aide quip about "we are an empire, we create reality"). Toodles!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This is a timely post - I was just considering raising a similar point regarding violence in the mideast. Rather than report on the strange coincidence of 1960s - 80s French radical philosophy (this is how I would at least begin to group the Foucault-Deleuze-Badiou axis) with Isreali tactical theory, I had intended to comment on Hezbollah and its peculiar tactics. Let me transfer some of those ideas here.
It does not at all surprise me that Deleuzian theory - or at least a reading of Deleuze based upon "A thousand plateaus" - has proved of value for the Israeli army. The Isrealis have, of course, entirely misread D&G, who do not hesitate to condemn the war-machinic state as one doomed to self-annhilation. To literalize their discussion of "smooth" versus "striated" space - terms which describe practices of organization, narration, and signification that are not inherently militaristic - is to engage in D&G's philosophical system at only the most facile level (much in the way that fascists appropriated Nietzsche). You just can't break down a wall and call that "smooth space." Of course, it is predictable that a war-making institution would make such errors. It is also predictable, however, that in fighting truly amorphous, "nomadic," smooth-space enemies (Hezbollah, Hamas, and so on) - enemies not bound to a strict institutional structure, respecting no formal boundaries of territory (the mandate of these enemies being the expansion of territory and/or disollution of preexisting boundaries) and, in the case of insurgencies, Hezbollah militants, and other non-Palestinian provocateurs (insofar as some Palestinian partisans advocate for the establishment of an independent state), pursuing political goals not tied to nation-building or statism - the Israelis might look to theories of guerrilla organization for pointers. Adapting to fight such enemies is not easily done with traditional (state-centered) approaches to tactics.
For those of us pursuing radical politics, whether in theory or practice, in the United States, there is much to be learned from the enemies of Israel - the way in which, for instance, Hezbollah partisans set up stations and centers to provide social services to their supporters: a sort of makeshift state within the formal state. I admire in particular their ability to inhabit diverse institutional bodies (the Lebanese parliament, the suburbs, social service centers, religious bodies) without being tied strictly or permanently to any structure in particular (of course, I am probably giving them much more credit than is due). To me, Hezbollah offers an instance of revolt outside the logic of revolution (insofar as a revolution restructures an entire political body - a paradigm shift), whereby alternative structures of organization, distribution, belief, exchange, etc emerge from within and in competition with an existing state institution. Of course, Hezbollah advances a strictly identitarian, or exclusive, politics, and so must be condemned from our perspective. As for the Israelis, it is difficult to understand how the movement of troops through walls by means of demolition amounts to anything close to a practicable strategy, even with the aid of dead French intellectuals.
Very well said Mike, Scantron, and Kushakov. If I had any idea how my post prompted these two shadow intellectuals to return from their hiatus in the underworld, I would have written it (and 30 others) years ago.
I have not read the authors in question, but even without having done so I have no doubt that you are right, Kushakov, to say they are appropriating them in the way you say they are (whether we agree with Israel or not, I can't see how you are wrong to say they are acting as the fascists did).
I would like to respond to your characterization of Hezbollah.
Robert Pape had an op-ed in the New York Times a couple of weeks back about Hezbollah that has generated a lot of discussion. He argued that it is neither a political party, nor an ideology, nor a religous milita, but rather "a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation." His evidence comes chiefly from the composition of Hebollah's suicide bombers over a short period in the 80s. He found that a surprisingly small number of these suicide bombers were Islamist radicals. Some were leftists (including socialists, communists) and some were Christians.
Pape's characterization seems to take Hezbollah to the rather idealized vision you are, I think, right to deny it. While Pape wants to say it's not a "strictly identitarian, or exclusive, politics" I have a hard time believing him. On the one hand, we are dealing with a party whose name means "Party of God," which would seem to leave many of these communists, especially of the orthodox Marxist sort, out of the picture (Christians too, as the past few weeks has shown). In addition, his data is already out-of-date. To begin to list the events and ideological shifts that have occurred in the Middle East alone since the mid-80s would take up a whole book. I simply am not willing to accept his logic that the Hezbollah then is the same Hezbollah as now. So, in short, I am in agreement.
adidas yeezy
kd shoes
air max 95
harden shoes
balenciaga shoes
yeezy boost 350
golden goose sneakers
nike huarache
longchamp
golden gooses
supreme
longchamp handbags
stephen curry shoes
jordan shoes
jordan 4
curry shoes
kobe byrant shoes
curry shoes
jordan 12
golden goose
Post a Comment
<< Home