In shifting from the ontological to the political, we move from the cosmic centrifuge of Being to the visceral struggle of the social field. For Deleuze, politics is not a matter of "who governs," but of which **forces** are allowed to circulate. The "selection" of the Eternal Return manifests here as a brutal distinction between the **State-form** (the sedentary, the majoritarian, the reactive) and **Minoritarian-becomings** (the nomadic, the active, the creative). --- ## 1. The State-form: The Archive of Voluntary Memory The State-form is the political equivalent of "Voluntary Memory" or "Recognition." Its primary function is the **Apparatus of Capture**. It operates through a logic of the "Same": it establishes a universal standard—a "Majority"—which is not a numerical count but a constant against which everything else is measured (e.g., the "Standard Citizen"). - **The Arborescent Model:** The State organizes knowledge and life into tree-like hierarchies. It demands that we remember "History" as a linear progression of justified events. - **The Reactive Force:** In the Deleuzian-Nietzschean sense, the State is "reactive." It can only define itself by what it limits, borders, and taxes. Because it seeks to preserve itself as a static identity, it is precisely what **cannot survive** the test of the Eternal Return. ## 2. Minoritarian-Becoming: The Selection of Difference If the "Major" is a state of being, the "Minor" is a **process of becoming**. Deleuze and Guattari argue that "minoritarian" has nothing to do with the size of a group; it is a movement that deviates from the "Standard" or the "Majority." In the centrifuge of political selection: - **The Selection of the Active:** Minoritarian struggles (queer becomings, nomadic movements, revolutionary ruptures) are "active" because they do not seek to become the new Majority. They seek to **proliferate difference**. - **The Return of the Event:** Only the minoritarian movement—which is pure change—has the intensive power to repeat. The State-form "repeats" only as a dull habit (a cycle of the Same), but the Minoritarian repeats as the Eternal Return of the New. > "The majority is nobody. The minority is the becoming of everybody." — _A Thousand Plateaus_ --- ## 3. Political Anamnesis: The Untimely This is where the concept of recollection becomes a revolutionary tool. Deleuze speaks of the **"Untimely"** (a concept borrowed from Nietzsche). Political Anamnesis is the act of reaching into the "Pure Past" to find the "Event" that the State’s "Official History" has suppressed. It is a "counter-memory." When a group engages in a minoritarian struggle, they are not just fighting for the future; they are **re-activating the Virtual potentials** of past struggles that were never fully realized. - **Example:** A revolutionary movement doesn't just "remember" a past failed uprising as a historical fact. It performs an anamnesis of the _vibration_ of that uprising, extracting its "essence" from the archive and hurling it into the present as a "Line of Flight." --- ## 4. The War Machine vs. The Apparatus of Capture To synthesize this into a speculative framework, we can view the political field as a tension between two "memories": |**Feature**|**The Apparatus of Capture (State)**|**The War Machine (Minoritarian)**| |---|---|---| |**Memory Type**|Voluntary / Monumental / Chronological|Involuntary / Intensive / Untimely| |**Temporal Logic**|The "No" (Preservation of the Same)|The "Yes" (Affirmation of Difference)| |**Selective Status**|Filtered out by the Eternal Return|Selected and Repeated by the Return| |**Spatiality**|Striated (Grid-like, Bordered)|Smooth (Open-ended, Vectoral)| The **War Machine** is the name Deleuze gives to the force that exists outside the State. Its goal is not "war" in the literal sense, but the preservation of "smooth space"—the ability to move, think, and become without being captured by the State’s sedentary memory. The Eternal Return acts as the ultimate judge: the State-form, because it is built on the "negative" (laws, restrictions, identity), eventually collapses under its own weight. Only the "War Machine"—the spirit of the minoritarian—is light enough to return. --- ## 5. Speculative Implication: The "People to Come" Deleuze often speaks of the need for a **"People to Come."** This is a speculative political community that does not yet exist. The selection mechanism of the Eternal Return ensures that we cannot find this "People" in the Majority of the present. Instead, we find them through a "memory of the future." By engaging in minoritarian becomings, we are performing a collective anamnesis of a humanity that has never been seen before—a humanity that is not defined by the State, but by its capacity to constantly differentiate itself. To examine the **Line of Flight** (_ligne de fuite_) is to observe the selective pressure of the "Minor" in its most kinetic form. If Anamnesis is the map of the virtual and the Eternal Return is the centrifuge, then the Line of Flight is the actual **trajectory of the particle** that escapes the center. In the Deleuzian political landscape, a Line of Flight is not a "retreat" or an "escape" into a private dream world. It is a creative mutation. To "flee" is not to leave the world, but to make the world leak, to find the cracks in the State's armor and expand them until the entire structure transforms. --- ## 1. The Anatomy of the Leak: Against the Apparatus of Capture The State-form functions through **Striation**—it draws grids, borders, and identities. It seeks to "capture" the flow of desire, labor, and thought by giving them a fixed point of reference (the "Major"). A **Line of Flight** is the primary reality that the State tries to manage. For Deleuze and Guattari, the line comes _first_. The social field "leaks" from all sides; the State is merely a secondary attempt to plug the holes. - **Deterritorialization:** The Line of Flight is the movement of deterritorialization. It unplugs a person or a group from their "territory" (their job, their social class, their fixed identity). - **The Power of the Minority:** The Minor is the selective agent here. Because the Minor has no interest in maintaining the "Standard," it is the only force capable of initiating a Line of Flight. A "Majoritarian" line would only lead back to the center; a "Minoritarian" line points toward the unknown. --- ## 2. Selection as "Betrayal" of the Social Contract In a speculative sense, we can view the Line of Flight as a **selection of betrayal.** To engage in a Line of Flight, one must "betray" the expectations of the State. - **The Great Betrayer:** Deleuze often praises the figure of the "traitor"—not a traitor to a person, but a traitor to the "Order of Things." - **Selective Affirmation:** The Eternal Return "selects" the traitor because the traitor affirms the **instability of the system.** The citizen who remains within the "Apparatus of Capture" is merely repeating a habit. The traitor, by embarking on a Line of Flight, is repeating the act of _difference_ itself. The Line of Flight is the "Minor" saying "Yes" to the outside. It is the refusal to be a "subject" and the choice to become a "vector." --- ## 3. The Danger of the Line: From Flight to Destruction A rich exploration of this concept must acknowledge its inherent danger. Deleuze and Guattari warn that Lines of Flight are not inherently "good"; they are simply **lines of becoming.** 1. **The Line of Abolition:** If a Line of Flight is not careful, it can turn into a line of pure destruction or "death." This happens when the escape becomes so radical that it loses all connection to life, leading to nihilism or fascism (a "suicidal" line of flight). 2. **The State’s Re-capture:** Alternatively, the State is constantly trying to "re-territorialize" the line. It takes a revolutionary idea (a Line of Flight) and turns it into a commodity, a fashion, or a new law (re-capture). The "selection" here is a delicate balance: the Line of Flight must be fast enough to escape capture, but consistent enough not to dissolve into nothingness. --- ## 4. Speculative Synthesis: The Line as a "Memory of the Future" Connecting this back to our earlier discussion of **Anamnesis**, we can propose that a Line of Flight is the **spatialization of a virtual memory.** When a minoritarian group (like the "nomad" or the "artist") opens a Line of Flight, they are acting on a "clue" they found in the Pure Past—a potentiality that the State-form had suppressed for centuries. The Line of Flight is the physical movement of "remembering" that life can be organized differently. > "To flee is to produce the real, to create life, to find a weapon." — _Dialogues II_ In this light, the "Minor" is the guardian of the Virtual. By refusing the "Major," the Minor keeps the door to the Virtual open. The Line of Flight is the "leakage" of the Virtual into the Actual, a process that the Eternal Return affirms as the only thing worthy of being repeated. --- ## 5. Summary: The Cycle of Liberation - **Anamnesis** finds the "unthought" potential in the depths of time. - **The Minor** selects this potential, rejecting the "Majoritarian" status quo. - **The Line of Flight** carries this potential outward, breaking the State’s "Apparatus of Capture." - **The Eternal Return** selects this movement of flight, ensuring that "becoming" continues to disrupt "being." This is how the "selective pressure" of the Minor creates a politics of constant mutation rather than static representation. For expansion of these concepts, please see [[Body Without Organs (BwO)]]