A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

Deterritorialization rejects focus upon individual conceptions for stress upon the human
and social objects in a manner reminiscent of Andre Gunder Frank’s research into the
“whole global context.” 58 By focusing upon all of humanity, Deleuze and Guattari also
avoid the problems of definition and qualification that plague paradigms such as nations.
Similarly, deterritorialization deals well with the excessively large analytical categories
that conventional history finds difficult to capture and that world history requires.
Deterritorialization is accordingly well placed to render the “total history” of the Annales
School and Marxism that forms the basis of world history. 59 Indeed, the entire notion of
deterritorialization renders elemental human nature and the multiplicity of historical
events at work across a plurality of temporal and spatial references in a highly synthetic
and holistic framework.
Yet their analysis is not a totalized approach to history. Deleuze and Guattari also
stress the individual phenomenon, event and theme. 60 Deterritorialization, the rhizome
and nomadology all prioritize a singular entity within the structure. By stressing an
exemplar of a system, the authors skilfully connect the singular to the general. But no
society can exist in isolation, since deterritorialization and reterritorialization interact, and
through the parataxis of the rhizome, connect all entities with each other. 61 Nor can one
entity be identified as static over time. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari reject
reductionism by contending that the human past contains a plurality of histories and
subsequently seek to convey the foremost themes. 62 World history’s focus upon the
particular and the universal sometimes can do violence to either level of analysis, but
Deleuze and Guattari are able to synthesize both the individual and the aggregate.
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