The organisation of excess : movement, analysis and alter-globalisation

This thesis involves a reading of the political problematics of the alter- globalisation movement. The thesis suggests that some of the fundamental problems faced by the alter-globalisation movement can be traced to its emergence in the crucible of intensive moments of political activity, at, for example, anti-summit protests. The expansion of political possibilities experienced during such moments, stands in contrast to the constricted sense of political possibility experienced during more quotidian times. To analyse the relationship between the two sets of political experiences we examine Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of antiproduction, the Body without Organs, and the socius; which we will argue carries the inheritance of Bataille’s concept of nonproductive expenditure. In the light of this theory we conceptualise intensive moments of political activity as moments of excess. We then examine the concept of an analytical war machine as a mode of organisation that can operate across the ruptures and discontinuities produced by moments of excess. The aim is, in part, to provide a mode of analysis that can operate across periods of transformation, even when the very presuppositions of the analysis are themselves subject to change. To do so we develop the concept of an analytical territory and examine the practices of the alter-globalisation movement through Deleuze and Guattari’s territorial concept of the refrain. This thesis, then, provides a novel and innovative reading of the political problematics of the alter-globalisation movement, and fundamentally reconceptualises some familiar repertoires and practices. At the same time, however, the thesis can be read as a novel and innovative interpretation of the political problematics contained in Deleuze and Guattari’s work.