An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote
Reply to comment by _caspar_ in Today I came by a few pages in Deleuze & Guattari that talk about a case where a city predated agriculture, with links to other books on the topics in the footnotes. It's interesting. by An_Old_Big_Tree
is this in 1000 Plateaus?
Yes, it's a fucking interesting book. This is the plateau called Apparatus of Capture. They also talk about anticiv stuff like writing and language in it.
are they claiming states initially arise out of an anticipation of their arrival due to the unstable nature of non-state lifeways?
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking because a lot of this hinges on how we understand 'unstable'. But I'll try:
They say that states arise out of acephalous decentralised societies in a completely contingent way. They give a few example of all the things that might have to line up for a despot to be able to appropriate it all. Which is to say, that "unstable" doesn't imply that there will be a necessary transition to a state society because there's some kind of fault in the way they are structured, just that the distributed power is more supple and less fixed.
_caspar_ wrote
Ive only read Nomadology: The War Machine taken from 1000 Plateaus, but will have to pick up the rest at some point.
"unstable" doesn't imply that there will be a necessary transition to a state society because there's some kind of fault in the way they are structured,
that's kind of what I thought, the key word being necessary. some (non-state societies) give way to the "increasingly imperative messages," but at the same time emit their own, leading to desertion and nomadism. kind of an asymmetrical dialog or something maybe? asymmetrical, in that the pervasiveness of states increased over time.
An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote
If I'm understanding you, I think D&G would avoid saying something like 'dialog' - they'd avoid any implication of dialectics.
I think insofar as it is asymmetrical they also wouldn't say necessarily so.
The material conditions are what they are, and there's always tonnes of forces going in all sorts of directions, where even the same objects that enforce the state also make space for the state to be undermined.
_caspar_ wrote
that's interesting. I used dialog to describe a back-and-forth, so they claim there wouldnt be that kind of reciprocity?
the same objects that enforce the state also make space for the state to be undermined.
this is even more interesting given technology's role in state formation. it seems almost overwhelmingly so states' ability to be undermined has been increasingly asymmetrical, especially since fossil fuels.
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