A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

the deterritorializing flows travel from the centre to the periphery, then from the new
centre to the new periphery, falling back upon the old system later. 55 This vision
prioritizes the periphery since the authors consider much decentralization to exist within
even the most centralized of social formations and empires because all power centres are
molecular, diffusive and dispersed. This study’s focus upon the shifting relations
between the centre and the periphery of colonialism will be heavily informed by Deleuze
and Guattari’s vision.
The administrative structures of colonial domination that linked the centre and
periphery are always of particular interest to scholars of imperialism. Deleuze and
Guattari’s emphasis upon organizational groupings can assist comprehension of the
German colonial bureaucratic system in both Berlin and the colonies. In their vision of
such systems, the authors see bureaucracies as powerful structural entities that subsume
and control popular desires. These ideas mirror Sartre’s idea of the “heavy machine” of
the colonial apparatus. 56 Seeing the colonial bureaucracy as interconnected with many
aspects of society and thus, more complex than frequently suggested, Deleuze
particularly works against the narrow view of the instrumentality of institutions, declaring
that “utility does not explain the institution.” 57 These ideas of a schizophrenic,
rhizomatic and deterritorialized administrative system will be of particular salience to the
investigation of the German state and its colonial policy.
Another beneficial element of deterritorialization is the theory’s ability to avoid
some of the major problems of world history, such as determining the appropriate breadth
of analysis. Deleuze and Guattari’s deterritorialization suggests an appropriate scope by
utilizing a combined vision of both the macro- and micro-levels of human interaction.
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