COLLAPSE I
The Militarization of Peace:
Absence of Terror or Terror of Absence?
Reza Negarestani
I NTRODUCTION
This essay explores the rise of a new wave of terrorism which
exploits its own dissolution, making a weapon of the doctrine of
Taqiyya or strategic (dis)simulation, dismantling the theatrical
aspect of the battlefield and selecting civilians as primary targets
and ‘molecular battlefields’. This tendency threatens not only
global civilian survival but the very horizon of survival or living (in
its most basic, abstract sense) in general. It makes survival itself a
field of exploitation for extremist terrorism.
When militarization ceases to be an exclusively
wartime process and to belong only on the battlefield,
then even peace—the temporary gap, the blank space of
unfriction between war machines and collective survival
—can be militarized. This does not mean taking
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COLLAPSE I
advantage of peace as a temporary suspension which can
be exploited, or as a depository in preparation for the
militarization processes of future wars (who gathers the
most forces when everyone else is resting?) Rather, and
far more significantly, it means the endo-militarization of
peace itself, wherein peace is directly used as a weapon,
exploited as a new plane for invasion and insurgency, and
for offensive strikes against enemy bases and/or their
supportive lattices.
New modes of disseminating terror threaten the basic
notions of survival in general, creating a generalized state
of terror where death hangs over, regulates, every
moment that is lived. Such necrocracy is the goal of heretical Islamic agencies of Terror such as Jama’at-e Takfir1 and
its Takfiri agents – a militant Jihadi movement believing in
the absolute excommunication of infidels (Takfir originally means excommunication). These agencies have
inspired a new wave of militant religious extremists and
other obscure terrorist groups who are exploiting the
endo-militarization of peace as a new mode of warfare.
This new mode of warfare is one whose tactical lines are
not aligned with (or configured by) the plane of conflict
and visible military friction (battlefields, terrains for
guerilla warfare, street-wars, etc.); Its tactical lines do not
1. Jama’at-e Takfir (The Society of Excommunication) influenced by Qutb’s Muslim
Brotherhood emerged in Egypt as a fundamentalist group in the 1960s with
Islamic fundamentalist and militant inclinations (the former being similar to
extremist Salafism) enmeshed through decentralized and stealth operation networks. The group advocates any military course of action (whether armed battles
or not) against Jews, Christians, apostate or moderate Muslims, in order to restore
(or return to) the primal unity of the Islamic world order.
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
have the localizability which is a prerequisite for direct
conflict and military formation; They are not positioned
to cut, block or replace each other depending upon their
different tendencies, transorientations and alignments;
Their operations have a wholly oblique relation to the
dynamic incompatibility which provides the basis for, and
the matrix of, militarized conflictual engagement.
A Takfiri engages as a shadow terrorist in White War –
the endo-militarization of peace, a state of hypercamouflage (best defined as complete and consequently
symmetrical overlap between two entities on a
mereotopological2 plane). In this war, the cover of
camouflage can never be penetrated or disrupted, and the
defensive employment of camouflage (best mapped as
partial overlap between two or more entities on a logical
plane) is replaced by a wholly novel, highly offensive
deployment, the space of hypercamouflage. The Takfiri’s
favoured mode of warfare is to program a new type of
tactical line which totally blends with the enemy’s lines in
such a configuration that it introduces radical instability
and eventually violent fissions into the system from
within. This happens in such a way that not only does
recovery become impossible, but in addition any corrective or restorative initiative is ineluctably turned into a
military subversion: like a chemotherapy gone awry or
an excessive scarring in which healing and the process of
2. Mereotopology is a theory of topological relationships between parts and
boundaries. See Barry Smith, “Mereotopology: a theory of parts and boundaries”,
in Data & Knowledge Engineering, Volume 20, Issue 3 (November 1996), Elsevier
Science Publishers, pp. 287 - 303.
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COLLAPSE I
epithalization, in the absence of a wound, corrode the
organ in the form of fibroproliferation (a scarring process
which transforms the local injury of the wound into a
pervasive metastatic scarring), resulting in eventual lysis
and decomposition. In attempting defence, the enemy
can only necrotize and dissolve itself.
DEEP TERROR: THE DECLINE OF THE ENEMY AND THE
RISE OF OBSCURE ALLIES.
Abdu-Salam Faraj’s manifesto Jihad: The Absent
Obligation – in which malevolent political pragmatics and
tactical perversion are planted carefully in a context of
evangelistic justification and theo-tyrannical apologetics –
is a case study of this mode of warfare: White War or
the militarization of peace, comprising aggressive hypercamouflage as its primary engine.
Hypercamouflage aims to pursue to even the most
attenuated extreme, a fighting and a surviving alongside
the enemy. It invariably indicates a total withdrawal
from the perception of friends and a dissolution into the
enemy: the rebirth of a new foe.
In his book, Takfiri cultist and terrorist Faraj crafts a
fetishized form of Jihad, suggesting that the incinerating
head of Jihad must be introduced to everyone, to any
entity, regardless of their position, geographic location,
ethnicity, regardless of the relevance or otherwise of that
entity to Jihad, Islam or infidelity – Jihad as a universal
sweeping movement. The original title of the book,
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which in translation has become simplified into Jihad:
The Absent Obligation, is Jahad: Fariezato Ghaebata (or Jihad:
Fariezeh Ghaeb). Fariezeh means holy duty, but not a subjectively authoritarian duty as is demanded by Huda (Allah’s
guidance), the ‘utter submission’ (Islam) to Allah. Ghaeb
means absent, but in Islamic texts and especially Shia
books, it encompasses a huge hermeneutic potentiality
which ‘absence’ cannot hope to translate; in fact, rather
than mere absence Ghaeb indicates latent potentiality, in
the sense, for instance, of the latent period of inactivity of
a virus. This latency is to be distinguished from the
actualized and visible, which is liable to distortion and
change: Imam Mahdi (the 12th Imam and the harbinger
of Qiyamah, the Islamic Apocalypse) is absent (Ghaeb) but
affects Islam and its followers more than anything
actually present; Mahdi represents a potentiality that never
ceases to affect. In Faraj’s book, however, this definition,
which is a fundamental theological and eschatological
platform for his argument, becomes eclipsed by a
message at once more accessible and more divergent
from this original meaning: Jihad becomes a holy responsibility which is not present.
Faraj’s book adds a new twist to the tactics of heretical religious extremists such as the cult of Takfiri: the
distortion and alteration of ‘Taqiyya’ (Taghieh) from its original defensive and devout function in the dawn of Islam.
Rather than a strategic (dis)simulation – a justified
concealment of true beliefs in situations where harm or
death will definitely be encountered if the true beliefs are
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COLLAPSE I
declared3 (the wider meaning of Taqiyya being “to avoid
or shun any kind of danger.”) it is reinterpreted as a silent
and fluid military infiltration, a course of action which
forms one of the elemental components of fetishized
Jihadism.
Faraj’s take on Taqiyya departs entirely from what in
the dawn of Islam originated as a defensive or protective
inclination, an evasive tactic. In The Absent Obligation,
Taqiyya is reconstituted as a type of strategic simulation or
dissimulation, in the name of a hostile politics of offence.
However, both in its traditional form and in this new
weaponized form, Taqiyya is strongly bound to the notion
of survival. In the traditional sense this is so simply
because by taking Taqiyya the believer survives in difficult
circumstances. But in militarized Taqiyya, survival is
transformed into a sort of highly-charged parasitical
endurance which inherently threatens the catalysis of all
those whose survival is afforded more easily. Survival
becomes as risky as a contagious terminal illness. Faraj
insists that Jihad cannot be separated from Taqiyya.
Whereas crusades transgress boundaries in order to
retake the holy lands, in Islamic tradition Jihad intrinsically cannot be transgressive; it must merely defend the
holy lands, and Islamic properties (which are not
necessarily associated with geopolitical agencies). But as
3. “The believers never ally themselves with the disbelievers, instead of the believers. Whoever does this is exiled from GOD. Exempted are those who are forced
to do this to avoid persecution. GOD alerts you that you shall revere Him alone.
To GOD is the ultimate destiny.” (The Quran 3:28)
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
revivalist figures like Sayyid Qutb4 and Shukri Ahmad
Mustafa have twisted the entire panorama of Islamic
thought, heretical Islam’s defence of its ‘properties’ has
become a universal ‘defence’ encompassing massive waves
of acentric assault and a military subversion pervaded by
a complex tendency towards the exclusion of all beings
except for the monopolistic wasteland of the Divine (the
Desert). “The earth itself moves towards Allah by
submitting itself to the ‘exterior’ Will of Allah; or in other
words, is not Earth a part and property of Islam (utter
submission to Allah) which must be defended?”: Qutb
turns the issue inside out, all of theological thought
becoming ravaged by monopolistic dictatorship and
monomania. The Earth itself becomes a part of the
defensive politics of Jihad 5. Ahmad Mustafa, one of the
theorists of the original Takfiri cult, also suggests that “We
are returning to Islam”, and that this Grand Return
4. Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), one of the central theorists of Islamic Revivalism and
an inspiration for later extremists such as Faraj; his Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq (Milestones)
is perhaps the first theoretical work of modern extremist Islamism, integrating
pragmatic exhortations with self-centered politico-religious doctrines. On Qutb,
see Paul Berman’s analysis of terrorism inspired by the caliph’s militarism and
heretical Islamic revivalism: Berman, P. (2004) Terror and Liberalism, W. W. Norton
& Company.
5. “The Islamic civilization can take various forms in its material and organizational structure, but the principles and values on which it is based are eternal and
unchangeable. These are: the worship of God alone, the foundation of human
relationships on the belief in the Unity of God, the supremacy of the humanity of
man over material things, the development of human values and the control of
animalistic desires, respect for the family, the assumption of the vice-regency of God on
earth according to His guidance and instruction, and in all affairs of this vice-regency, the rule
of God's law (Shari'a) and the way of life prescribed by Him ...” (Sayyid Qutb, Milestones);
see Qutb (1991) Milestones, American Trust Publications, p. 286.
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COLLAPSE I
involves surrendering to the Desert of the Divine: this is
not a reactionary response to the infidels, he insists, but
merely the path to Islam, which is condemned and met
with overreaction by the rest of the world – a world
whose entire horizon, moreover, is in fact already a part
of Islam. Mustafa’s discussion takes a twisted monotheism and heretically embeds it within the foundations of
Islam – creating a retrograde movement back to a selfdeluding, romantically-imagined phantasy of the original
Islam. To this notion of Jihad which seeks to retake the
Earth as a part of Islam (Earth as a part of the universe is
on the route of utter submission – Islam – to Allah) Faraj
cunningly adds the politics of Taqiyya. As Faraj himself
confesses, this (re)taking of the Earth is not an easy task;
hence the necessity of being armed with Taqiyya and its
potential for insinuation and diffusion within the systems
and peoples of non-Islamic countries.
According to Faraj the new doctrines of weaponized
Taqiyya can be enumerated as follows:
(1) TAQIYYA AS THE DISSOLUTION OF YOURSELF AND
THE OTHER: Taqiyya becomes a politics aimed at drawing
the war out of the battlefield (In this extremist Jihad, war
must be put to work everywhere but the battlefield; war
is external to the conventional battlefield. ‘War is not a
theater, you infidels’, Faraj shouts). This is to be achieved
by introducing the Jihadi entities to civilians and all other
seemingly militarily irrelevant political economic or
cultural entities, by blending with the crowd which exists
far from the front lines. ‘Towards the real omnipresence
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of war which progressively effaces the theatrical platitude
of the battlefield’, the doctrine of Terror voluntarily
transforms itself into a sinister movement of utter selfdissolution. The use of Taqiyya as a (para)offensive
politics, however, is not the invention of Faraj, or the
Takfiri cult, or even of Wahhabi extremists. It can be
traced back to Hassan i-Sabah but it is not the invention
of Hassan either (although he improved and strictly
militarized it). The sole credit for Taqiyya as a (para)offensive polytics aimed at blending with the crowd (as opposed
to Taqiyya as a dissimulating tool for evading harm, as
devised in the early days of Islam) belongs to Abdullah
ibn Maimun or Maymun (and his Batiniyya cult, one of
the underground heretical Islamic societies and
subversive movements which he founded and which later
turned into Isma’ilie sects directed by Hassan i-Sabah):
Maimun, the Persian occultist, political saboteur and
conspiracist who undermined the reign of caliphs in
Egypt (where the Takfiri cult also originated together with
such influential figures such as Qutb, Mustafa, et al.) with
a sudden debacle, and prepared the region for his
ambiguous and mysterious allies Al Fatemids (Fatemion)
who later became the most enthusiastic enemies of the
caliphs and their conventional modes of militarism.
Faraj, following closely Ibn Maymun’s politics, suggests
that Taqiyya should not be merely a deception, a hiding
tactic; it should consist of seeking the highest degree of
participation with infidels, with their civilians: “if they
take drugs we must do the same, if they take part in every
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COLLAPSE I
type of sexual activity we must drive those activities to
the point of excess”, etc. The Jihadi extremist must
become as one with the civilians of what are called
‘hardcore infidels’.
(2) TAQIYYA AS A (PARA)OFFENSIVE MILITARIZATION OF
CIVILIANS: In reference to Faraj’s politics of Taqiyya as an
inseparable element of Jihad, the French counter-terrorist
expert and President of the Paris-based World
Observatory of Terrorism, Ronald Jacquard, brilliantly
points out that a ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’ is himself a primed
bomb, whether or not he ever sees action (is involved in
a mission). When a Takfiri becomes as one with ordinary
civilians – no longer dissimulating but moving and
behaving like a true, unfaithful civilian in every aspect of
his or her public and private life – then the weapon
begins autonomously to be activated from the other side;
the government (of a foreign non-Islamic country, for
example) itself begins to filter, purge and hunt down its
own civilians, curtailing their rights, confining them to
economic, social and political quarantine to isolate or
even purge the disease and its potential hosts at the same
time. Each individual is potentially a Takfiri cell or niche,
a site of infestation, a primary military target. So that the
most offensive, active phase of a Takfiri’s life is not when
he or she is on a high-profile mission like 9/11, but rather
when he or she becomes a mere civilian, totally unarmed
and dissociated from any line of command. A Takfiri
levels himself with everyone and consequently levels
everyone with himself; when it comes to hunting a Takfiri,
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one ineluctably ends up exterminating non-military
entities, far away from the battlefield, in the heart of one’s
own land.
(3) TAQIYYA AS A TRIGGER FOR WHITE WAR: Taqiyya
unbalances the entire conventional dynamics between
war machines, a dynamics which sees them clash with,
hunt, and consume each other. This process of unbalancing does not serve to shift the battle along the diametric
axis of ‘victory or defeat’, but rather to unbalance the
communicative links between two tactical modes: active
military lines at one pole and virally latent (un)tactical lines at
the other. The Takfiri shuts down all his military potential,
tactically ‘dies’ (not even being camouflaged anymore),
and later is resurrected again in ‘his’ true form. The
Takfiri war machines of extremist Jihad operate on
transient and divergent tactical lines. As a result, they
cannot be reached or communicated with: communication which is the prerequisite for the clash between war
machines and entropically-based military conflicts, mechanisms considered by Deleuze and Guattari as the
processes which fabricate the very machinery and space
of War.
(4) TAQIYYA AS A DESERTIFICATION TOOL: Giving
fetishized Jihad an epidemically omnipresent machinery,
Taqiyya allows Faraj to open a new era in the imagining of
mechanisms of extinction, sabotage and eradication
fueled by the pyromaniac aspects of heresy and dangerously romantic theo-tyranny. Faraj discusses the fact that
‘their’ (he rarely even names his so-called enemies: the
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COLLAPSE I
US) military war machine relies heavily on the megadeath
principle or as they put it DEATH FROM ABOVE
(Overkill, Killing drones, High-tech airplanes, smart
bombs, “Shock and Awe”, MOAB (Mother of All
Bombs), invisible missiles descending from nowhere).
Faraj presents a Takfiri alternative to this megadeath
machinery6: He discusses a new doctrine of hypercamouflaged terror which he calls ‘Dieback machinery’, a term
borrowed from botany and agriculture7. What he defines
as ‘Dieback’ can be applied to an entire ‘civilization just
as well as a Tree or any arborescent mode of collectivity’:
in order to introduce a Tree to extinction, a Takfiri
terrorist never interferes with the roots, attempting to
uproot the whole tree, as this would merely remove the
taproot, leaving rootlets and other root parts in the soil
that would eventually grow and give rise to many new
trees. The terrorist or Jihadi extremist launches a dieback
6. Questions of escalation and diffusion of conflict in time and space are of massive significance for both the western military campaign and Jihadism’s terror-skirmishes. While Jihadism works with diffusion in its off-battlefield conflicts (through
its petropolitical contamination of the global politico-economic systems, its reckless
use of weaponized Taqiyya, working with strategy rather than tactics and contagious communication rather than transgression), the western techno-capitalism
maintains a escalating position in the battlefield, a position connected to the
propulsive body of techno-capitalism, its tactical precision and suprmacy.
However, both of them share a common tendency in conflict: turning human
agencies into molecular battlefields / warmachines; for Jihadism this molecularization of warriors takes an epidemically dispersive form: mainly through Taqiyya’s
para-offensive plane and for the western front, it turns into re-nomadization (in the
Deleuze-Guattarian sense of nomadic warmachines) of the State’s army and miniaturization of an entire army and its specifications on and through the body of each
soldier.
7. A disease of plants characterized by the gradual dying of the young shoots starting at the tips and progressing to the larger branches.
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disease against the tree: to be precise, he starts to
extinguish the most expendable and smallest leaves growing at the top of the tree and its branchlets, and continues
his work to the rest of leaves, without damaging the main
trunk or roots. By destroying leaves from top to bottom
and by marring branchlets, the tree will wither: excommunicated and dejected, the tree will eventually be entirely incapacitated and will start to (over)react autophagically
and allergically to the artificial dereliction effected by the
dieback disease. Taqiyya provides Takfiris with ample
opportunity to use this dieback machinery, starting from
the leaves (civilians or what they call ‘expendable
entities’) and branchlets (small organizations, etc.),
ultimately rendering the tree obsolete without ever
having launched any direct attack against its main
organs.
When a tree is infected by dieback disease, only leaves
and branches are destroyed; however, lacking leaves and
branchlets, the tree gradually becomes prone (overexposed) to environmental factors and all of its systems
become locked into malfunctioning programs, lowering
its immune system and consuming the tree from within.
Various stages in the dieback of a civilization would be:
paranoia; lack of investment; civilians as primary targets
for both fronts; dereliction. All of which result in a
reactionary response from the infected tree which, rather
than aiding recovery, is self-destructive. In a system this
self-destruction (or malfunctioning self-recovery) can be
defined as breakdown of the mechanisms responsible for
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COLLAPSE I
self-tolerance, and the induction of an immune response
against components of the self. Such a cataclysm leads to
the reprogramming of the (immune) system to damage
the self.
A ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’, then, is nothing but a civilian.
By destroying himself and civilians he can apply the
dieback mechanism to a system. Weaponized Taqiyya is
not directly connected to the dieback mechanism; but it
is a way in which a Takfiri can shift the role of Taqiyya from
mere camouflage to a powerful logistical plane on which
(para)offensive tactics and strategies can be converged
and amplified. When a Takfiri extremist goes under
Taqiyya he embeds his sabotaging mechanisms within
civilians, uses civilians as back-doors. A Takfiri under Taqiyya
is transposed from being a key operational figure in his
own army to being a civilian; at this point, Taqiyya
actually gains access not to important targets but to
ordinary civilians (the primary tactic of the dieback mechanism), allowing the Takfiri an opportunity to effectively
confound and twist all diagrams and maps which allow a
civilian to be distinguished from a terrorist. Through this
back-door, a Takfiri can both damage civilians (or expendable entities of the tree, as they are regarded) more
effectively on a massive scale, and turn their protection
systems against them by assimilating them within itself
and by being assimilated by them.
The original doctrines of the Takfiri cult originate from
the teachings of Qutb and Shukri Ahmad Mustafa. Faraj,
under the influence of the doctrine of ‘Takfir wal’Hijra’
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(Excommunication and Exodus) – imitation of the
prophet who left Mecca and the House of Allah to live in
a purified desert purged from any manifestation of idolatry
– enunciates a new vision of desert and desertification
alien to the conventional image of the Desert familiar to
socio-political dynamics, and western social dynamics in
particular. On several different levels, this desert encompasses all radical trends of Islam, from the ceaseless
exteriority of Allah to Man, to desert as the mere
functional plane of submission to this radical exteriority
(Allah who will be never disclosed), to the original desertnomadic ingredients of Jihad. A desert nomad does not
migrate, as it is minimally under the influence of climatic
factors; it burrows tunnels of its own, making its own
niches within the desert, crossing the dimensions of holey
and smooth spaces, exploiting and betraying them
equally. Scorpions are burrowers not architects, they do
not build upon compositions of solid and void, nor do
they move restlessly, they devour volumes and snatch
spaces; for them the holey space is not merely a dwelling
place, a place to reside (a niche for occupation) but more
than that, it is the Abode of War (dâr al-harb), the holey
space of unselective hunting. Mustafa hysterically
introduced the machinery and the notion of the desert
into all threads of his thought to such a degree that his
cult was mockingly called ‘The desert flogging society’. It
is rather ironic to reveal Mustafa’s real profession: he was
a very talented agronomist.
Take a Russian forest bordering the tundra, whose
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trees are emptied of life because they have been hit by
black-rot and winter dieback; In a Takfiri sense, deserted
trees are no different from a desert without trees: dieback
purifies, desertifies, the infidel organism, bringing the
Earth within the compass of the utter desolation of the
Desert of the Divine.
In the wake of militarized Taqiyya, the Takfiri is no
longer the problem; it is the original civilians of the
country, rather than immigrants, who pose a terminal
security threat. There is no more radical act of war than
fighting in molecularized and expendable battlefields
whose potentiality for conducting conflict has already
been incapacitated.
LOGICAL I NVESTIGATION OF HYPERCAMOUFLAGE VS.
NOMADIC CONFLICT.
“In the past one took a more defensive attitude,” wrote
Koch, referring to miasma theory. “We have now moved
away from this defensive point of view and have seized
the offensive ... We must be prepared, first, to detect the
infectious material easily and with certainty, and second,
to destroy it” (Koch 1903, 8, 10). For Koch, taking the
offensive meant actively seeking the parasites not only in
those obviously ill but also those “suspected” of carrying
them (die Verdächtigen) and in “the apparently healthy.”8
Every warmachine or tactical line occupies a niche
(whether in wartime or peace), a space through which it
8. Otis, L. (1999) Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature,
Science and Politics, The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 34-35
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can move, feed and function; it is not only defined by the
distinctive properties of a tactical line or warmachine but
also by its enemies, the incompatible dynamism of other
tactical lines, types of predators, the exposure to environmental factors, its threshold for receiving data from the
environment, the types of data it receives and its propinquity to what it pursues or probes (there is a common
misunderstanding that attributes solid or crisp boundaries to niches; but niches are assembled wherever an
entity economizes a portion of its environment and
survives / functions in that economized space9). At a
given time t, the entity r occupies a unique10 address (or
set of addresses) as rt(x); its movement can be simplistically expressed in terms of the niches it occupies at successive intervals of time. This address is encoded and set
apart by the niche which the warmachine or tactical line
occupies.
The functions of a niche are not merely disjunctive
and exclusive (for example, directing competitions i.e.
selective movements which result in exclusion of other
portions of the environment or lines of movement) but
9. In fact, some monitoring systems basically concentrate on niches with fiat and
vague boundaries to screen and guide their occupants (tenants). Air traffic control
systems constantly analyze the volume of protected or restricted airspace – defining a circumspace or the volume enclosing a flying object – for collision avoidance,
alert systems and translocations of aircrafts. The volume of protected airspace is a
modified term for niche in traffic management, a simulation of the niche that exists
in flying or migrating birds.
10. This uniqueness is characterized by the definitive properties / qualities that the
address attributes to an entity in space-time but to have an address does not mean
to be the exclusive owner of it.
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COLLAPSE I
also connective/conjunctive. In fact niches mobilize their
occupant entities with their characteristic types of
dynamism, associating them with other niches based on
the affordance necessary for following a tendency or a
plane as well as sharing it with other niches and their
inhabitants. The programming of its niche is the first
basic operation of engineering or recomposing an entity.
Therefore the significance of investigating niches or niche
types (rather than token niches or occupants) progressively increases with the development and emergence of
new dynamic lines, power formations, traffic spaces and
planes of communicative conjunctions. The State and its
grid of dominance identify the movements of an entity (r)
in a niche (whether quantitative – metron-based [measurable, scalable] – or qualitative) by the series of addresses
it authenticates and registers as it travels:
r (x1,x2,x3,...,xn)
For the State, the dynamism geared by warmachines,
the way that each warmachine perpetuates its itinerant
line, can only be traced and numerically tagged through
the logic of boundaries, the programming of dwelling/
accommodating systems and (dis)locations that the State
is able to monitor by monitoring niches and their dynamic addresses. By means of overseeing boundaries through
which entities pass, investigating the temporal effects on
(or alteration of) the forces of territoriality that moving
entities leave behind, their types of localization, and their
behaviors towards mereologic economy (the economy of
the whole), the State can fabricate a cogito (a non-human
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cognition) not only to realize but also to classify the
movement of entities and the dynamism of warmachines
whose immoderate nomadic itineracy means that they
cannot be directly apprehended or sensed by the State.
This is the cogito required for appropriation of warmachines under the State’s military protocols and forms.
Bound to (semi-)rigid segmentarity, dynamic boundaries,
affordance-based connections and static or dynamic localizations (or more accurately, in-place and outside-place
localizations), the State examines the dynamic space of
each entity and its activities – those activities corresponding to its functional, territorial and mereologic regions –
not only to read the characteristics of an entity but also to
locate it on (or according to the proximity of the entity to)
its grid of dominance. The State and all configurations of
Survival Economy track entities through the niche(s) that
they inhabit or populate. For the State’s military
Overwatch, investigating and tracing the niche is the
primary and central task; the itinerant line of an entity or
a warmachine, its communications and functional traits
are all deciphered by scanning the niche the warmachine
occupies and its type. The advanced reading-machines of
the State are even capable of extracting the quiddity of a
warmachine or an entity by analyzing the specifications
of the niche which is intrinsically bound to affordance,
dynamic forces of boundaries, and eco-logical principles.
However, as niches are connective entities (entity-asevent in a Deleuzian sense); they do not exclusively
belong to one entity or one tenant. Multiple entities can
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COLLAPSE I
share one niche and niches can form nested niches (territorial forces diminish – but never disappear – in grouping
bonds) linking to each other, being connected in various
modes. Modes of connection between niches are divided
for the most part into two asymmetrical correlations:
a. Abutment (A)
b. Overlap (O)
In the Deleuze-Guattari model of the nomadic warmachine, the warmachines are external to the State’s
effective boundary, restlessly eroding it, gnawing at the
consolidated borders of the State. Logical modeling of the
interactions between the exterior nomadic warmachines
and the State is complicated mainly by the following
problems:
(a) Both the State and the warmachine retain a relative
11. Affordance is an economical network (in the sense that it is connective and
reciprocal) by which openness can be exploited as a groundwork for survival,
accommodation, dwelling and regulating communication.
The term affordance as used here diverges in certain respects from the original
term coined by James Jerome Gibson (based on the works of Ingarden, Brentano,
et al.) in his eco-cognitive studies. The regulations by which an entity can maintain
its dynamic position (in a whole, i.e. mereologic address) and survive in its environing horizon originate from a deeply meshed economic-based network of interactions, connections and regulative participations, all knitted on mutual affordability between the entity and its environment. Whole can only survive when entities
can afford each other, every type of openness on mereologic levels is demarcated
by mutual affordability ‘between’ entities. Affordance does not exclusively belong
to one pole of the economical communication but is distributed between at least
two mereologic entities. ‘I am open to you as long as I can afford you’ otherwise:
(a) you must be repulsed (b) attracted by being regulated and appropriated (c) partly filtered (d) I should appropriate myself to ‘accommodate’ you. Therefore, the
plane of being open to is intrinsically constructed on affordance or economical
affordability/communication. Through affordance, openness cannot escape
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movement to each other (each dynamic on its own plane
of tacticity) which makes the State’s militarized machines
and nomadic warmachines slippery entities with a
progressive displaceability increasing as attacks and
counter-attacks are escalated at the borders of the State.
(b) The rise of the clandestine State, that opens itself
to the nomadic warmachines to either absorb them
within its military formations by continuous contacts
with nomadic warmachines (such contacts are essentially
bound to contaminative potentials for both the State and
the nomads) or reinvents nomadic warmachines as its
mercenaries, dynamic lines for extending the State
beyond its border, a new dynamic boundary providing
the State with the opportunity of accommodating (colonizing?) or economically affording (affordance11) the
Outside instead of being cracked open by the Outside.
survivalist and economical regulations; it mainly works as the dynamic capacitator of Whole. Possibly the most elucidating (yet simplified) ‘model’ of affordance
is Aristotle’s Tetrasomia (Rotation of the Elements).
The rotational movement between elements sustains a refining dynamism for the
whole. Each phase of rotation is based on dynamic metrons (measures, scales) and
affordance (here, economical openness or mutual affordability) between elements.
Elements are open to each other either diametrically or diagonally, but they can
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COLLAPSE I
Focusing on the spatiogeographic aspect of the warmachine (necessarily interconnected with its affective
aspect) – or, more precisely, investigating a mereotopological model of the nomadic warmachine and the State
through their distinctive but general mode of connection
which can be grasped as abutment or external connection
– might be the primary task for diagramming the affectspace and the lines of movement generated between concrete nomadism and the State. This modelling, both
spatiogeographic and mereotopological (and thus necessarily indicating an immanent affect space) of the
nomadic warmachine and its positioning relative to the
State’s boundary elucidates the processes at work in the
emergence of anomalous nomadic states (as in the case of
the ‘guerilla-state’ and its connection with ethnonationalism in Iran or the Bedouin nomad-tribes and their strong
but ambiguous bonds with the Saudi government in
never entirely overlap or radically communicate with each other; they need a midstate to form rotational nexuses and maintain their Wholeness. These mid-states
are valid only in a particular location of the whole rotational panorama; although
they provide the system with a propulsive polemikos or cyclic dynamism, they function locally (as a result of the elements’ affordability to each other and, at the same
time, to the whole system of Tetrasomia). For example, Earth and Water need
Menstruum (living mud) to communicate. This living mud is a communicational
entity but also a dynamic boundary which transforms/appropriates the earth and
water before opening them to each other; it can only work locally between earth
and water and not at any other location in the model of Tetrasomia. The Whole
uses these economical communications to consolidate itself and to afford Life (to
survive).
“I assume that affordances are not simply phenomenal qualities of subjective experience (tertiary qualities, dynamic and physiognomic properties, exc.). I also
assume that they are not simply the physical properties of things as now conceived
by physical science. Instead, they are ecological, in the sense that they are properties of the environment relative to an animal. These assumptions are novel, and
need to be discussed.” (J. J. Gibson)
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y
x
Abutment
x
y
Partial Overlap
x
y
Disjunction
Fig. 1
Saudi Arabia) as well as the increasing risk for nomadic
warmachines engaging clandestine states or states with an
obscure boundary.
P OSITIONING OF THE NOMADIC WARMACHINE ON A
MEREOTOPOLOGICAL PLANE.
Abutment (fig. 1) is an external connection, with
minimum trade between niches or entities (the least
contagious connection, given its tendency towards dissociation). It is demarcated by its intermediacy before partial overlapping and after disjunction, by its tangential
contact and boundary overlap.
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COLLAPSE I
What was once the frontier of the State’s defence is
continuously eroded by the reckless tidal or updrift movements of nomadic warmachines. The operational significance of this mode of connection (Abutment) has been
significantly decreased with the emergence of symbiotic
and manipulative warmachines and covert militarization
processes on the one hand, and advanced reformations of
the State towards the accommodation (or colonizing) of
the Outside on the other. The latter are rooted both in
the introduction of territorial climatologic factors12 to the
dynamism of nomad-packs and in the development new
modes of survival. Now, the state knows well how to
save its foundations, even if it means assembling spaces
susceptible to the erosion of nomadic warmachines,
attracting or diverting the incoming nomadic incursions
12. On Climate and Nomadology: Following the so-called Hydraulic and
Agricultural Revolution in Iran (similar to that which Wittfogel associated with the
Chinese Empire, as well as Homer-Dixon’s more recent theories on
Hydropolitics), during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah), an hydraulic
plan – highly recommended by American consultants – was developed and proposed as a catalyst for economic development in Iran; one of multiple objectives
of this plan was to solve the problem of nomads in Iran. Apart from putting into
effect a program of hydraulic restructuring of the diverse geography of Iran (a
geography with innate potential for the forging of diversifying lines of nomadic
movement), one of the stratagems of this hydropolitical program of reform was to
originate a system for monitoring and domesticating Iranian nomads who played
key roles in resistance against the centre or induced geopolitical disintegration of
the State’s territory via their ethnonationalistic movements. The plan was neither
a method for drawing the eastern and central nomads to the governing center nor
a project for forcibly accommodating them in a sedentary sphere through the
monopolization of water-networks and direct military impositions. Rather, it suggested accompanying them, interlocking with them and replacing their dynamism
with the State’s fluxional lines of tactics, its dynamic boundary and territorial
forces. The project’s objective was to construct a soft climate (klima: zone) or a
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
to specified and preprogrammed regions to protect its
critical terrains and vulnerable mechanisms, or transforming its macropolitics into a viable micropolitics which
are open at one end and grounded at the other end.
In a typified connection Cτ, abutment can be mapped
on the Euclidean plane R as:
Aτ(x,y) = df Cτ(x, y) ∧¬Οτ(x,y) (x abuts y)
(Where Οτ is a typified boundary overlap.)
Or let T = {X, cl} be a topological space, where X is
the set of points and cl is the closure operator. Let I be
any index set that includes 0. The domain, D, of a
Layered Model is a nonempty set of ordered pairs
xi=<x,i> where ∅ ≠ x ⊆ X and i ∈ Ι . (xi will be used
for <x,i>).
A(xi,yi)=:x∩y=∅&(cl(x)∩y≠∅ or x∩cl(y)≠∅) (abuts)
Since Abutment links entities on a tangential plane
(confinium), the state can effectively resist any arriving
onrush of nomadic warmachines on this mode of connection with minimum attrition damage on its critical interior (the plane of logistics and lines of command). In fact,
clandestine states seek to channel all the cumulative
damage induced by nomadic warmachines (as the
postulate of the obtrusive danger) on this mode of
connection. This is achieved by deflecting any fundamentally contagious, manipulating and undermining
threat towards distributive and recoverable eroding
processes; these latter can even be programmed to
transport the State out of its rigid segmentarity and
despotic bond with territoriality, prolonging the survival
77
COLLAPSE I
of the state in a fluxional mode in a manner of an
abrasive machine of the fluvius (river) that erodes solidity
in order to transport it by the dynamic conservative vector fields of sedimentary processes – capturing fecundity
and irrigation in detrition. With warmachines tirelessly
gnawing at the State’s textum, incising and liquidating its
crisp boundaries, the State begins to leak out, but this
does not only express the collapse of the State but also the
dangerous exposure of the nomadic warmachine to the
underlying grid on which the State is assembled and
which holds its interwoven space, a network of grounding processes, mechanisms of territorial regulation and
economic repression.
The Installation of the operational cutting-edge of
nomadic warmachines on the State in the absence of any
ungrounding machineries (which incapacitate the dominant grounding, territorializing and moderating functions
of the State) is a similar case to that of the premature line
of deterritorialization which facilitates either the unconventional establishment of new immunologicallyenhanced States or a suicidal flight. Persian history, over
a long period of time (from the Achaemenians to the
Qajar dynasty (1779-1925), more than two thousand
years), narrates such a continuous conversion of nomadic
forces into State forces, before being again replaced by
another nomadic population (cyclic nomadic uprisings
against the ruling regime with a nomadic germ-cell still
active but privatized as the State’s elite, versatile military
institution). Such premature nomadic detritions of the
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State have progressively given rise to more powerful (in
terms of gravity, immunity and parasitic resistance) yet
more unstable States, causing politico-economic poverty;
inclination towards being colonized by other States; lack
of an autonomous nervous system and polarization of different populations without the possibility of positive
diversity; constant vulnerability to schisms, civil-wars,
and ethnonationalistic fault lines deleterious to an entire
country or geopolitical sphere.
When abrasion processes of nomadic warmachines
continue to hold their eroding positions – essentially
characterized by transporting dynamism of friction
(tactionis) and the process of mass-wastage – over a long
duration on the borders of the state, hyper-active territorial nexuses between the State and nomadic warmachines
emerge, increase and expand. Once such nexuses are
established (boundary overlap), the underlying ground
economy of the State (or its territorial forces), its entities
and even the State’s internal machineries directly leak out
into the space traversed by nomadic warmachines, to
such a degree that they pervade the nomadic space and
the State
the State
N
N
Fig. 2. Boundary Overlap with the State (diagrammed as a square) and Nomadic
Domestication (left), Tangential Contact (diagramed as a circle) and Nomadic
Effectivity (right)
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COLLAPSE I
turn it into a dynamic extension of the State13. In this
case, the State’s functional or territorial entities cannot be
effectively enveloped and carried away by nomadic warmachines (as in the case of tangential contact) anymore.
They cannot be cut from the State’s grid of dominance,
liberated and radically dispersed to the Outside (fig. 2).
The hazardous contact of nomadic warmachines with
the State, exposing them to the state’s regulating functional/territorial spheres, can eventually lead to the emergence of a nomadic-state on the one hand and an
ethnonationalistic nomadism (identical to the State’s
patriotic policies) on the other. Probably one of the most
significant examples of such anomalies triggered by the
over-exposure of nomadic warmachines to the State is
that found throughout Persian history.
(b) Overlap:
If, in a simplified approach, P stands for parthood and O
for overlap:
Οτ(x,y) = df ∃z(P(z,x) ∧ P(z,y))
And
Oxy=:∃z(Pzx & Pzy) (x and y overlap)
Then the following Axioms apply:
AP1 P(x,y)↔∀z(O(z,x)→Ο(z,y))
AP2 ∃x(φ(x))→∃x∀y(O(x,y)↔∃z(φ(z) ∧ O(z,y)))
Any participation (either methexis as survival-based
participation or base-participation) happens through
overlapping connections. Therefore, the majority of
13. A cache for the later movement of the State’s macropolitics towards its
micropolitical reformation
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COLLAPSE I
combined connections (Tangential, Parthood, Interior,
etc.) are effectuated by different possibilities educed by
overlap between entities. Overlap draws lines of coincidence between two events or entities by specifying an
address that two entities partly or completely share in a
spatio-temporal or a functional region. Both the State’s
appropriations and counter-state insurgencies happen
through this mode of connection. Whilst it is exploitable
by the State and by affordance, this does not mean that
‘overlap’ cannot also be the main source of insurgency –
it is the connection-domain through which warmachines
leave their border-eroding externality and directly arrive
at the State’s grid, either to be specialized by the State
apparatus and turn into military formations or to be
reinvented as contagious, endo-symbiotic and parasitic
entities coinciding with the State and its machineries and
consequently
discovering a wide array of clandestine
x
y
y
{
x
z
Not overlapped:
The zone of evacuation and withdrawal from the
camouflaged position or the escape-route.
Fig. 4. Partial overlap and its interval relations in Camouflage:
(1) Between two entities; (2) Between two entities and the third entity
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and manipulative functions.
On a more technical plane, all camouflage exploitations are essentially consistent because they all involve
the use of ‘overlap’ (or, more accurately, coincidence, as
the question of overlap between entities here is the
question of overlapping niches which these entities
occupy14). Furthermore, they turn it from a mode of
connection into a politically-operational positioning that
violates both the symmetry of a niche with the address it
writes (programs) for an entity and the divisors (events,
entities, etc.) which separate and discriminate the addresses or niches of two entities in space-time coordinates.
However, this violation (that necessitates the activation of
camouflage) cannot remain durable and unchanged,
because predatory/military camouflages always employ
partial overlap, with a part constantly accessible as ‘not
camouflaged’ (either belonging to the camouflaged entity
x or the entity which it should be overlapping i.e. y15 [See
14. Two entities will be said to overlap when they share parts in common: two entities coincide when they occupy overlapping regions of space.
15. An example of the not camouflaged part (not overlapped) solely belonging to x
or y: When the ‘not camouflaged’ part merely belongs to y (in a typified
connection):
x
y
x internally overlaps y. When:
IOτ(x,y) = df∃z (IPτ(z,x) ∧ IPτ(z,y))
x is an interior part of y, and when
IPτ(x,y) = dfPτ(x,y) ∧ ¬ TPτ(x,y) and
TPτ(x,y) = dfPτ(x,y) ∧ ∃z (Aτ(z,x) ∧ Aτ(z,y)), x is a tangential part of y
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COLLAPSE I
fig. 4]). This not only makes tracing and handling of the
camouflaged entity possible on a tactical level but also
provides the camouflaged entity with an escape-route or
a space for instant evacuation and withdrawal from the
camouflaged position. (An escape-route can also be
unlocked when an entity z – a third party – connects to
both x and y with different overlapping positions for each
one (See fig. 4); here, the escape is channeled through
another camouflage, a new camouflaged participation
extracted neither from x nor from y.) This ‘not camouflaged’ or ‘not overlapped’ part inhibits the camouflage
from being durable or constantly undetected, but also
makes camouflage controllable; the camouflaged entity
can move out of the camouflage at any moment.
All types of camouflage draw a disruptive function
from the overlapped part (which mainly occurs on a fragmented level) by conducting the address or niche of
another entity (for example, the prey) to the camouflaged
entity (hunter) and consequently disrupting the mereologic (part-whole) correlations at work with regard to
what should be camouflaged, making it temporally and
partly untraceable, camouflaged. Such disruptions
(which generally target a reference-point or a referencelink by which an entity is detected) can produce cognitive-glitches as well as the subversion of some specific
environing bonds that pass through both the
camouflaged entity and its object (its prey). Motion
camouflage uses a particular type of tactical dynamism
(in cases where the prey is also in motion, the movement
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
of the shadower or the camouflaged predator moves on
the path of a chaotic pursuit; the movement can be modeled by projecting its pursuit curves onto the Rössler
attractor) or dynamic overlap to disrupt (i.e. shadow) its
distance and displacements from the prey (the shadowed)
by moving on a path that connects it to a fixed point
(used by the shadowed as a reference-point – a constant
unit vector) while the motion by the target is met by the
motion from the aggressor. In motion camouflage, then,
the shadower remains stationary for the target. In the
most common military camouflage – disguise by covering
objects (soldiers, vehicles, artilleries, launch pads, etc.) –
with Disruptive Pattern Materials, disruption happens
through surface modifications of a camouflaged object on
which the visual sensory organ focuses as a reference-link
between different types of surface patterns in its
surrounding space, resulting in the ignoring of the object
as a part of the safe environment. Invisibility (as a retreat
Fig. 5. If Coin stands for coincidence, O for overlap, P for part, Cov for
cover and CCoin for complete coincidence.
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COLLAPSE I
from visual sensors), too, employs and modifies partial
overlap as an occlusion by obscuring surfaces, interiorizing, positioning the camouflaged (cloaked) entity where
boundaries intersect (obscuring boundaries), etc. The
primary drawback of the invisible warmachine is the
danger of being traced by semiotic regimes of the State
which are more obsessed with what is missed than with
what exists.
As the result of partial overlap, all disruptions and
subversions of mereologic bonds are subjected to eventual disclosure; and each time a camouflage is spotted, it
progressively loses its potential; any entity using such a
camouflage will be more prone to detection and
forestalling counter-measures than it usually is; this is a
symptom of the holistic connections between partial overlap and ‘localization’ which has not been functionally
incapacitated and spatially effaced yet. This is why
camouflage is rarely implemented as a primary action or
an offensive tactic but mostly as a logistic process or a
mis-ordering transitional space between different tactical
and operational lines. Transient characteristics and
stringent operational restrictions obstruct radical
weaponization of camouflage.
A Takfiri under Taqiyya (Islamic hypercamouflage)
does not occupy a niche to replace another entity, or
dwell as a hidden agent; he pushes the connection with
his environment toward a complete overlap, an unbroken
field of connection and correspondence, a complete
coincidence with its target, i.e. a complete overlapping of
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
its niche with the niche of its target. He entirely overlaps
his prey and its niche and thus remains silent.
Coin(x,y)↔∃z(Cov(z,x) & Cov(z,y))
(x and y coincide if and only if there is some z that is
covered by both x and y; z standing here for niche. While
Cov is a transitive and reflexive relation, Coin is symmetrical and reflexive. The relation of coincidence is of
course broader than that of overlap, since there are pairs
of coincident objects or even processes that do not share
parts. The same question of relation arises for a Takfiri
under Taqiyya and a civilian.)
For a Takfiri under Taqiyya, occupation is neither a
military goal nor a tactic; since occupation is exclusive localization tethered to the mappings of co-localization and
parts-whole connectedness – that is to say, the despotism
of Whole – the occupier is vulnerable to environmental
forces; it can be easily distinguished, located, isolated and
finally terminated i.e. undone at the minimum attrition
cost of its environment and surroundings. Where occupation is bound to visibly militant and escalating modes of
warfare and exclusion, weaponized Taqiyya is maliciously
diffusive. In mereologics (the discourse of part-whole
modes of connectedness) we would call the positioning of
Taqiyya complete overlap: the Takfiri constitutes a sinister
survivalism whose basic function is to extinguish survival
itself. In complete overlap (see Fig. 6), every region,
function or part of the hypercamouflaged entity or
predator, the ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’ (X) can correspond
with its identical region, function or part of the
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COLLAPSE I
prey/host/civilian (Y). Therefore if every x (part or function of X) homologizes its corresponding y (part or function of Y) or more precisely, if every x corresponds with
its y ‘on all levels’ then every function of X (the tactical
movement of the Takfiri under Taqiyya, or hypercamouflaged predator) can be transferred to Y and they mutually fulfill each other.
x=y↔∀z(Oxz↔Oyz)
(Any two members of the domain that overlap the same
Fig. 6. Complete overlap and symmetric fulfillment
(Symmetry: Let S be the symbol for symmetry where n is an integer, d is the
class descriptor and compd is the complement of d:S = {n(d) ∧ compd} )
entities are identical.)
But the most horrific dimension of this arrangement
is revealed when the process is reversed: if every x fulfills
its corresponding y, then by way of the ‘exact connectingcorresponding’ space that complete overlap and complete
coincidence (CCoin(xi,yi)=:x=y)16 provides, every y (i.e.
16. Complete coincidence can be expressed in terms of covering (Cov):
Ccoin(x,y)↔Cov(x,y) & Cov(y,x)
(x and y completely coincide if and only if y covers x and x covers y)
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
every function or positioning of the prey Y, which would
comprise for the most part normal survival functions and
ordinary individual or social activities) can be transferred
to its corresponding x and eventually fulfill it too. By
seizing any y, a corresponding x is triggered and covertly
unleashed; and since we are dealing with complete overlap, the very survival and communication of Y deploys,
activates and fulfills the menacing body of X, the Takfiri
under taqiyya. On the one hand, the survival of the prey/
host/civilian thoroughly agrees with the sinister enthusiasm of the terrorist; and on the other hand, peace is
generally conceived as the state of collective survival. So
that the survival of both the terrorist and the civilian
yields nothing but the (interminable?) endo-militarization
of peace, a global threat against civilians, the rise of
White War and the threat that, fuelled by the infinite
thirst of heretical Jihadism, the contagion of war might
expand unchecked, even to fill the immensely significant
horizon of survival and living in general.
Now that the survival of Y or the host/civilian
(together with its communication and modes of connection through and with its environment) fulfills the political
and military body of the ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’, the mere
existence of the civilian is weaponized against both itself
and the immune system of the system that accommodates
and protects it to such a degree that auto-phagic overreaction looms as the only logical solution for the system.
It is the military culmination of Taqiyya to deduce irrevocable insanity from the minimum essential logic
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COLLAPSE I
required for basic survival.
EXEGETICAL CONCLUSION.
“The trends explored here will obviously be decided
‘on the battlefield’ - but that increasingly means everywhere. The centrality of hypercamouflage to Jihadi strategy is already having immense consequences, inducing a
wave of ‘retro-militarization’ in State war machines,
where ‘teeth’ flow back down the ‘tail’ in a process without obvious terminus (short of the fanging-up of the
entire social body).
Saddam Hussein’s auto-disassembly of his own war
machine in the interests of a latent insurgency exemplifies
this trend from one side, whilst the moves to harden up
US logistics formations through armoring of vehicles and
combat training for all personnel complements it from the
other.
Human rights concerns about killings of civilians
could relevantly be extended from the empirical level to
that of the transcendental, where the eradication in principle of all civilian populations is taking place. The very
concept of ‘the civilian’ is becoming distinctly dated.
(Virilio’s analysis – despite betraying a somewhat antiquated perspective through terms such as ‘endocolonization’ – seems to have anticipated this trend).
The US is especially interesting because it remains a
‘peripheral’ (even ‘third world’) society in certain
respects, marked by a low domestic index of State
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Negarestani – Militarization of Peace
monopolization of violence, thus allowing retro-militarization from the State pole to connect with an endogenous paramilitarism already rooted in the ‘civilian’ population (armed vigilantism and militia movements). As far
as militias are concerned, the world ain’t seen nothing
yet.”17
17. This exegetical conclusion to the current essay was contributed by Nick Land.
91