Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 1As an alternative to the traditional approach to societal development byidentification of a superior force actor, its apparatus, and its environmentalproduct, Deleuze and Guattari argues that any force, any actor, any apparatusor any production must be understood as a dialectical play between forcesand counter-forces, actions and counter-actions etc. And this leads to anotherapproach for understanding dynamics in the relation between architecturaland social transformation of urban landscapes:Each element in Deleuze and Guattari’s abstract analytic model is a pair ofmetaphorical concepts representing a productive dialectic relation: The Stateand the Nomad represent two different actor-perspectives, dialecticallydefined in relation to each other. These two are connected to two differentkinds of dialectically opposed apparatuses representing different ways ofoperating, organizing and executing power: The hierarchical state apparatusof the State and the network-based war-machine of the Nomad. Theoperations of the two actor perspectives and their apparatuses work on theterrain, the space or society in different ways, by space-striation (the state)and by producing smooth space (the nomad). By this, the agency or theoperations of one of the two actor perspectives are seen as a continuousreaction against, working on or challenging the product of the other actorperspective, and visa versa:Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between striated space and smooth space asproducts two different but coexisting, and dialectically related sorts ofagency, that reflect two different modes of spatialisation or attitudes towardsspace, two complimentary logics of space production, or two complementarysystems of forces and counter-forces: Striated space as the deterritorialisationproduced by the State apparatus, and smooth space as thecounteract of re-territorialisation produced by individual nomadic thoughtand practice.Smooth space and striated space – nomad space and sedentaryspace – the space where the war machine develops and thespace instituted by the State apparatus – are not of the samenature. (…) the two spaces in fact exist only in a mixture:smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed intostriated space: striated space is constantly being reversed,returned to a smooth space. 46Studies of the dynamic relation between architecture, ways of life andsocietal development are in general based on diachronic investigation of46 Deleuze and Guattari 1987: p 47437