Nomadology

Conceptual Framework

Nomadology is derived as a reference to the life of the nomad, one whose being does not unfold according to a territory, bound to cities and villages, but who travels and traverses territories, all along the way following the surface of the earth, from well to well, from marketplace to marketplace, and beyond. The nomad is radically opposed to the civilian, the man/woman living within the state. The civilian is coded in three stages: first, man or woman is surrounded by all types of social apparatuses; then, living according to them, he/she becomes the subject of his/her statements (“I,” the civilian); finally he/she is empowered accordingly, functioning within all facets of the state as an active part of its machinery.

The nomad is different. The nomad does not live according to codes (neither of the self nor of the space surrounding him or her). Instead of territoriality he practices a de-territorialization, which creates a mobile existence instead of a sedentary life. The nomad is Genghis Kahn, who “didn't understand” the city, which is to say that he was unaffected by the power of the state apparatuses that had encircled him, warding off all forms of organization through which the state needed to work (intending to capture and organize life), and not accepting the power (the status, the property) it had to offer. The nomad is, however, also the terrorist, the vagabond, the outlaw, or actually any type of life capable of resisting the encoding machineries of power.

Yet we need to think the concept of nomadology in an even more abstract manner. For as actualized in the person of the nomad or any other anarchist personality, the concept still breathes an anthropocentrism, which falls short of the conception of Deleuze and Guattari. In the words of its creators, the nomad stands for a pure becoming: nomadology maps an ontology of movement. It is not a metaphor (there is nothing “meta” about it), but rather expresses a way of thinking about both [Page 508]the material and the immaterial that is remarkably absent in the history of Western thought. This denies the power of the state from occurring, along with territoriality (or ownership), institutional subjectivities, and other defined identities for that matter. But in the end nomadology prevents all fixed states from taking place. Nomadology illuminates the restless margins that hide themselves from any kind of authority. They are akin to the “faceless enemies” George W. Bush referred to when he tried to define whoever was responsible for 9/11.

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