Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

150 The map is not the territory
of networks rendering the multitude of global locales as a worldwide social
force. Continuing to approach social movements as actors operating within
discrete societies ignores the complex interactions which complexity theory
offers a useful and useable means of engagement.
Postmodernism and neo-materialism
Postmodernism, the pessimistic epilogue of modernity, has become a catch-all
term with a dominant discursive representation as heralding the death of
science and rationality as the foundation stones of now defunct metanarratives.
Postmodernism has taken many forms ranging from the linguistic
relativism of Derridean deconstruction, that is apt to see the material world
as inert and amorphous and as such defined purely through linguistically
expressed cultural conventions, through to the more materially orientated
philosophical positions taken by such as Lyotard (1988). His stance is material
in the sense that it is underpinned by the presumed extinction of
humankind as the ultimate end against which the individual has to pursue
a life. Given this end, the postulated singular ontological positioning belief
in any over-arching meta-narrative is ultimately pointless as all lead to the
same terminal end point when the Sun goes super-nova.
Deleuze is often presumed to fall within the postmodernist canon
although his philosophical stance is profoundly realist and materialist,
accepting as it does the existence of actual and virtual forms and theorising
the morphogenetic processes through which the complex interplay between
the actual and virtual occurs. Deleuze, as we have shown, is a philosopher
who is adept at utilising the full force of contemporary physics and biology
to analyse and articulate flows of difference and complexity. From the
biological foundation of the body through the embryonic folding and
stretching, dividing and augmentation of cellular layers to the realisation of
infinite microscopic differences that constitute us as singularities composed
of singularities, and the translation of the resultant ontological isolation
into the basis of solidarity through recognition, respect for and ease with
difference. In this way, the potential for re-forging new meta-narratives
becomes a possibility, meta-narratives which transcend the particularism of
nationalisms or wider geo-political and ideological identities. The
Deleuzian influence in Hardt and Negri’s meta-narrative of Empire (2000)
and Multitude (2004) is particularly apparent, as we have noted previously.
This is one of the reasons why Deleuze (and Guattari’s) work resonates with
the range of nomadisms noted in the introduction. Enhanced mobility is
part of the postmodern condition bringing with it shifts in the ontological
positioning of these nomads who begin to reframe the project of life as
immanent to life, thus allowing possibilities to multiply in the face of a
seemingly futile future of species extinction.
Marx suggested humankind is the ultimate zoon politicon – a political
animal as well as a force of nature. By recognising and acting upon the