A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

etween German and African societies. 31 Secondly, by incorporating Deleuze and
Guattari, this project attempts to be broadly “postcolonial” in its examination, by
incorporating recent interpretations of the colonial past, while still remaining fully
cognizant of the nuances and heterogeneity of this term. The most visible way that this
postcolonialism manifests itself in this study and in Deleuze and Guattari is the attention
paid to difference and agency. 32
The methodology of this inquiry’s use of Deleuze and Guattari will be fairly
orthodox. The authors’ thought will be investigated first, with the aim of establishing its
relevance for the events under examination. Next, the specific social, cultural, economic
and political elements of German colonial expansion in Africa will be examined with
deterritorialization in mind. Deleuze and Guattari’s work will be examined, evaluated
and related to the history under discussion. By approaching German colonialism as a
multi-polar enterprise of overlapping interactions, involving both Europeans and
Africans, this methodology can render the complex power relations of colonialism in the
most satisfactory manner.
This methodology, and its indebtedness to Deleuze and Guattari’s theory,
represents a novel approach to the discussion of German colonial expansion in several
ways. With the exception of John Noyes’ work, the use of Deleuze and Guattari’s
deterritorialization to highlight issues within the history of colonialism is almost
unprecedented. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari are rarely found in actual
historiography. Deterritorialization has also never before been used to represent the ebb
and flow of interaction between colonial metropolis and African periphery. Finally, older
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