Goodman, Steve, 1973- (1999) Turbulence : a cartography of postmodern violence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis maps the end of the millenium in terms of the geostrategic flux of the post Cold War world system. Using the concept of turbulence developed in the physics of fluids, and Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari's liquid microphysics of the war machine, a materialist analysis of violence is developed which cuts through the binary oppostions of order/chaos, law/violence, war/peace to construct a cartography of speeds and slowness, collective compositions and power. Sector 1 defines postmodernity in terms of cybernetic culture, delineating the distinction between Deleuze & Guattari's concept of cartography and steering the problem out of the remit of a juridico/politico/moral discourse telwards physics. Sector 2 develops a fluid physics of turbulence and connects it to a materialist analysis of social systems by mapping turbulent and laminar flow onto Deleuze & Guattari's war machine and apparatus of capture. A fluid dynamics of insurgency is then outlined with reference to the geo-strategic undercurrent constituted by Chinese martial theory. Sector 3 reconfigures social evolution in relation to the non-linear social physics developed in Sector 2, unmasking the racism and Imperialism of linear narratives of progress. Instead of progression from one historical phase to another, the planet is seen to be composed of a virtual co-existence of modes stretched out on a continuum of war. This continuum connects the martial modes of despotic states, disciplinary states and packs. These modes differ in their degree of compositional laminarization. Sector 4 deploys the cartography on the emergence of a planetary cybernetic culture and its relation to a global machinery of war. Postmodern control is designated as turbulence simulation or programmed catastrophe- a runaway process of accident or emergency quantizing typified by implosive turbulence in the core of the world system and its overexposure. Sector 5 pushes the cartography towards an antifascist fluid mechanics otherwise denoted as an ethics of speed or a tao of turbulence.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	World politics -- 1989-, Violence, War -- History -- 20th century, Social evolution
Date:	January 1999
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Philosophy
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Extent:	280 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/36343

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