Events of organicity: The state abducts the war machine

Abstract

A brief and schematic presentation of two ethnographic events illustrates the dynamic engendered by the clash between the state as striated and organicity. This clash is the Deleuzian war machine. The ethnographic events are part of Israeli nationality: one shows a close combat training session within the Israeli Defense Forces and the other a recording of Holocaust survivors’ stories for educational purposes. Both are instances in which somaticity is channelled into the national through abduction. The body animates and cultivates the mixed dynamic of nationality, infusing its forces of striation and congealment with life. Although Deleuze and Guattari posit that the war machine is born from the nomad as it encounters the state, and that it is external to the state, the following analysis of the ways in which the war machine operates within the national clearly shows that the war machine can be both a requirement and a product of the state. The forces of striation are just as unstable as the forces of rhizome. They tend to crumble and fall apart when the impetus of stasis becomes too overwhelming. To remain socially tenable, the striated craves the organic nature of the nomad, and depends on the emergence of the war machine.