TALK TWO: of territory

The morning newspaper covers the table. The headline and story from the former Yugoslavia preoccupy the members. They are mystified by the seeming pointlessness of the misery and bloodshed. The field by Donny Brook lies brown in the morning sunlight, and its resident groundhog has emerged. It moves with a certain air of ease toward the stream for morning ablutions.

ABLE: If we could understand the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, we would have our hands on the essence of the problem of the postmodern situation. Then we could begin to get beyond it.

BAKER: Even as we talk, they are expecting a peace settlement. Maybe the conflict will go away. Then we will not have the example to profit from.

ABLE: On the other hand, if they in fact are making a settlement, they may offer us the prime example. On what terms is the settlement? Figure out the answer to that, and we may have our hands on a general principle to apply to other conflicts.

BAKER: The Bosnians and Serbs elevate TERRITORY to a metaphysical level. If the peace seekers discover an answer (we can be justifiably skeptical), it probably will be in terms of territory. Space. Territory is of the essence of what we are studying. Lyotard says we occupy territories that are defined by the language we speak. Territories are finite, circumscribed. The borders of the territories are equally crucial. When you are in the center of a territory, where the language is the same for everyone, and there are no foreign sounds to confuse you, it is easy to practice political justice. When you get away from the capital, into the provinces, out where your territory begins to be in sight of another territory, you begin to be nervous.

ABLE: But even at the center there is no homogeneity. Even within a language there are borders, which are the precondition for conflict. Every sentence you speak declares ownership of a space. You exclude someone from that space with your very utterance. You deny the other person occupancy. Brawls in barrooms in villages take place among neighbors, not strangers.

CHARLIE: The good news is that VIRTUAL TERRITORY, cyberspace, lacks the attributes of real territory. We could believe that in the interconnecting spaces of postmodern cyberspace, the primitiveness of the postmodern will be finessed. Deleuze and Guattari talk of two kinds of space, striated and smooth. Our sense is that they will not allow one without the other. The pain that comes with striation may lead you to a yearning for smooth space. You attain it; then the very lack of specificity and difference, which you experience in smooth space, causes you to look for striation. Why do humans become bored, even with pleasure? We can see in this duality of space, striated and smooth, a never-ending dialectic. Shall we call it life?

ABLE: Yes, but we need to find the underlying principle of change from one to the other and back again. The Bosnians and Serbs haven't done so yet.

BAKER: D&G have no referent outside of space itself. Sometimes the ghost of Hegel's spirit seems to want resurrection in their text. They create a dialectic out of sheer space. If we can burrow inside the concept of territory at its most abstract level, we may see something new.

CHARLIE: Their thousand plateaus could be to us what Hobbes's Leviathan was to his time. We can take heart in their insight.

20 November 1995; updated 9 December 1996

THE TABLE TALK

THE ARGUMENT (EVOLVING)

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