A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

where change is performed upon an entity. 15 However, Deleuze and Guattari reject
reification and hypostatization by being careful to admit that the concept of
deterritorialization does not motivate changes, only that it will “strictly determine their
selection.” 16 Fundamentally, deterritorialization is enacted by the framing of a system, a
movement away from the former system and construction of a new energy, removed from
the original system. 17 Finally, because deterritorialization in one element can also
provoke shared or combinative deterritorializations in other elements, deterritorialization
is never singular, but exists rhizomatically in composites.
The “always multiple and composite” nature of deterritorialization is central to its
ability to represent the agent of change. 18 In deterritorialization, evolution and teleology
are abandoned because of the myriad desires within entities, each containing the potential
toward deterritorialization and each with relative degrees of deterritorialization, which
renders progressive causality an impossibility. 19 Deterritorialization rejects the binary
oppositions that Fredric Jameson and Christopher Miller identify, for it offers a more-
nuanced vision of constitutive forces. 20 The fact that deterritorialization can be located
within the dimensions of space, time and desire means that it functions as what Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri call “the primary force” through which human interaction
makes itself manifest. 21 This contrasts with Noyes’ narrow vision of deterritorialization,
but deterritorialization should also not be reified into concrete form. 22 Deleuze and
Guattari maintain that their purpose is not to represent the world specifically through
deterritorialization, but to connect social entities through the dominant characteristic of
the world: deterritorialization. 23
25