Gilles Deleuze – Nomad Thought (1973)

Trans. David B. Allison and Collected in The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation (1977). Originally published as 'Pensée nomade' in Nietzsche aujourd'hui? 1. Intensités (1973). Featuring Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Kafka, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Pascal, Blanchot, Godard, Jean Wahl, Bataille, Klossowski, Lyotard, Julius Caesar, Cesare Borgia, Max Brod, Beckett, Leo Strauss, Kojève. ‘Archaeologists have led us to conceive of this nomadism not as a primary state, but as an adventure suddenly embarked upon by sedentary groups impelled by the attraction of movement, of what lies outside. The nomad and his war machine oppose the despot with his administrative machine: an extrinsic nomadic unit as opposed to an intrinsic despotic unit. And yet the societies are correlative, interrelated; the despot’s purpose will be to integrate, to internalize the nomadic war machine, while that of the nomad will be to invent an administration for the newly conquered empire. They ceaselessly oppose one another – to the point where they become confused with one another.’