the derelict zones of drug use are the engines of late capitalism, not because they are abject, but because they are moments of difference where desire seeks to escape bodily limitation.
(Fitzgerald and Threadgold 2004: 416) One of the most interesting things about capitalism is that it tends to operate through, and thrive upon, the production of deterritorialised fl ows (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 453). Flows of money, of goods, of labour and trade; fl ows of information, language and art; fl ows of desire and identity: all are produced and supported within sites of capital.
Unlike the State, capitalism thrives upon on the capacity, and desire, of bodies to become-other. Through sites of capitalist consumption, for example, bodies are increasingly able to mutate: to transform their identities, their behaviours, their organisation and their potentials. As Massumi notes, ‘subjectivity is being disengaged from the plane of tran-scendence of “human” being, becoming an immanent abstract machine of mutation’ (1992: 135). Capitalism cares very little for the categories of identity, morality, reason and rationality that otherwise pervade the social strata. You can see and say and be and do almost anything in relation to sites of capital, so long as you do not interrupt the fl ows (Colebrook 2002: 65).
In relation to sites of capital, then, remarkable possibilities seem to open up for becomings-other: for deterritorialising the body and its relations with the world. The becoming body, write Fitzgerald and Threadgold (2004), ‘is both beautiful, fear instilling and a source for productive capital in modern capitalist societies’ (415); it is ‘a most valu-able site as it is at once both marginal and central to the production of capital’ (415).
Such becomings and deterritorialisations, however, cannot be sepa-rated from the movements of reterritorialisation, which are also an essential part of the operation of capital. As Patton suggests, ‘capitalist societies simultaneously reterritorialise what they deterritorialise, pro-ducing all manner of “neoterritorialities”’ (2000: 97). For while capi-talism is busy destratifying bodies and codes, it is also simultaneously engendering extreme forms of stratifi cation, producing, for example, rigid striations of wealth and poverty, and fi rst and third worlds (Deleuze 1995: 172–3).
These seemingly opposing forces of deterritorialisation and reterrito-rialisation are not at all incompatible. As Deleuze and Guattari make clear, capitalism’s becomings – like all becomings – are always double, involving not only a line of deterritorialisation, but also an equal and opposite movement of reterritorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
10). One reason – perhaps even the primary reason – why capitalism is so successful is because it has mastered the coordination and modula-tion of the two forces deterritorialisamodula-tion–reterritorialisamodula-tion (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 492). The question of the success of capitalism, then, is not one of ‘freedom’ versus ‘constraint’, observe Deleuze and Guattari, ‘but of the manner in which one masters the fl ows’ (1987:
462). Contemporary globalised capitalism is increasingly perfecting the speed of transference between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisa-tion, such that the pulsating movement from one to the other happens at an ever-greater effi ciency and speed. As Deleuze and Guattari note, ‘at the complementary and dominant level of integrated (or rather integrat-ing) world capitalism, a new smooth space is produced in which capital reaches its “absolute” speed’ (492).
Rather than code bodies according to qualitative values (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.), capitalism increasingly tends to code bodies in ways that are quantitative; its aim is to regulate and direct fl ows (con-sumption, trade, profi ts, etc.) rather than to judge them. In other words, it focuses less on coding bodies in terms of hierarchical molar identities and categories, and more on coding them in terms of their functional capacity to effect fl ows of capital: that is, in terms of their exchange, rather than moral, value.
Sites of capital are increasingly adept at harnessing the desiring- potentials of minoritarian, nomadic and deterritorialising bodies. Thus we see, in relation to capitalism, the simultaneous production and suppression, release and containment, exploitation and censorship of minoritarian bodies. The cultural and bodily becomings-other of young people, the poor, ethnic minorities, anorexics, drug users: all are increasingly harnessed to market goods. At the same time, the suppres-sion of minoritarian groups and movements is increasingly tied to the threat they pose to capitalist axiomatics and fl ows. In many ‘produc-ing’ nations, for example, workers protesting against their conditions are often violently crushed by a totalitarian State acting in the direct interests– and with the cooperation and support– of large multinational corporations (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 472). We also see minorities in ‘consumer’ nations – protesters, the homeless, drug users – regularly suppressed or ‘moved on’ in the interests of maximising fl ows of capital.
The extent of these violences, which includes violence against all sorts of minoritarian bodies (third-world producers, ethnic minorities, indig-enous bodies, women, children, animals, forests), is also often obscured by the ‘freedoms’ offered within spaces of ‘fi rst world’ consumer capital-ism, at least for those who have the capacity to consume (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 447; Deleuze 1995: 173).
The deterritorialising potentials opened up by heroin chic fashion advertisements, therefore, cannot be separated from the territorialisa-tion and stratifi caterritorialisa-tion of minoritarian bodies, nor from the obscuring of these territorialisations. For our ability to think beyond the logic and aesthetics of capitalism, and to develop successful forms of resist-ance to the sorts of harms it entails, is itself continually undermined by capitalism, which is increasingly taking over responsibility for the production and circulation of philosophy, art and politics (Deleuze and Guattari 1994). As Deleuze notes, ‘The current political situation is very muddled. People tend to confuse the quest for freedom with the embrace of capitalism. It seems doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to liberate a people’ (2006: 379). Art’s involvement with capitalism, therefore, does more than simply divert the energy of artists; it also helps to launder unethical corporate brands, giving them a cleaner, brighter – and more ‘revolutionary’ – public image, at the same time as diverting attention from substantive issues of politics and ethics (387–8).
Yet can revolutionary, artistic fl ows not also potentially be produced from within sites of capital? Because they work in and through the decoding of fl ows, capitalism does indeed necessarily engender unex-pected lines of rupture and fl ight: lines which are capable of forming revolutionary ‘war machines’ and challenging both the state and capi-talism (see, for example, Patton 2000: 7). Capicapi-talism, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, ‘gives rise to numerous fl ows in all directions that escape its axiomatic’ (1987: 472–3); it is ‘leaking all over the place’
(Deleuze 2004: 270); ‘its lines of escape are not just diffi culties that arise, they are the very conditions of its operation’ (270). Although most of the escaping fl ows are captured by the State or reterritorialised by capitalism (i.e. harnessed in advertising and marketing), some do have the potential to gather momentum and link up with other fl ows to form broader, revolutionary movements of resistance or escape. To this deter-ritorialising affect, Bennett (2001) gives the term ‘enchantment’. She argues that ‘part of the energy needed to challenge injustice comes from the reservoir of enchantment – including that derived from commodities’
(128). These moments of deterritorialised enchantment, including those offered through capitalist consumption and advertising, enable a kind
of ethical posture or energy which is necessary for the formation of an ethics (128).
Bennett’s argument that an ethics can – perhaps even must – emerge from a kind of joyous deterritorialisation or ‘enchantment’ is an impor-tant one. It is from such an ethico-aesthetics, rather than from ethical or moral imperatives, that it becomes possible to bring forth a ‘people to come’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 218). While I agree with Bennett that such an ethico-aesthetics is possible within capitalist advertising, I am less optimistic about the extent to which such sites can offer these revolutionary potentials. As Deleuze and Guattari admit, ‘all decoded fl ows, of whatever kind, are prone to forming a war machine . . . But everything changes depending on whether these fl ows connect up with a war machine or, on the contrary, enter into conjunctions or a general conjunction that appropriates them’ (1987: 459). To the extent that an advertising image constitutes an ‘art’ that has been produced under the conditions of a consumer capitalism – designed such that the deter-ritorialised fl ows that it engenders are channelled toward, rather than away from, capitalist consumption – its range of creative possibilities (its virtual potential) is reduced, and its capacity to launch revolution-ary deterritorialisations is diminished. The forces of stratifi cation and violence which are a ‘complementary’ part of capitalism’s deterritori-alisations are more likely to be obscured than rendered visible through its vision. Certainly advertisements do work in ‘unpredictable’ ways (Bennett 2001: 113, 115), but sites of capital are, as I noted earlier, extremely good at appropriating escaping fl ows. They may not always succeed, but in most cases they do.
Although I agree that it is possible for an ethical and political posture to emerge from within commodity cultures (such as advertising), I believe that it is more crucial that art fi nds non-capitalist sites – or at least sites which constitute cracks or fi ssures within or between capi-talist relations – from which to launch its lines of fl ight. Rather than oppose capital, revolutionary forces must constitute ‘decoded fl ows that free themselves from this axiomatic’ (Patton 2000: 105), and through which other ways of connecting and perceiving become possible. It is, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, ‘by leaving the plan(e) of capital, and never ceasing to leave it, that a mass becomes increasingly revolutionary’
(1987: 472).