Summary
Reterritorialization, Deleuze and Guattari’s term as Chapter 6 of The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry applies it to the Rome Group of Egyptian Jewish communists in Paris: a reconfiguration of the Egyptian national space and their location in it that enabled them to persist in their political commitments after exile (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 2660-2675).
Details
- When the Rome Group lived permanently in Egypt, their connection to the country was undeniable even if some Egyptians considered them outside the national community; in Paris, where the “naturalness” of their bond to Egypt was exposed to question, they had to be more assertive about their right to a place in the Egyptian national topos, and underwent what Deleuze and Guattari have called a “reterritorialization” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 2660-2675).
- If, as Deleuze and Guattari asserted, “anything can serve as a reterritorialization, in other words, ‘stand for’ the lost territory” (Chapter 6, note 20), in this case the group itself fulfilled the role — political organization, family, personality cult and immigrant support group at once (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 2660-2675).
- The application is qualified: the group’s militant engagement in liberating the Egyptian nation-state from semicolonial domination meant it could not adopt the “rhizomorphous” conception of identity or the “nomad thought” advocated by Deleuze and Guattari, even if its subsequent political practices suggest it might be considered their avatars. The Introduction likewise rejects Deleuze and Guattari’s “Nomadology” as unrelated to any contemporary social structure, against Ronit Matalon’s Ines: “A person does not need roots, he needs a home” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 124-176, 2660-2675).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Rome Group, Henri Curiel, HADETU