Abstracts Q

Anne Querrien, Lutte des classes, machine de guerre, révolution moléculaire
Class struggle, war machine, molecular revolution


My communication will be from the perspective of someone who experienced political struggle with Guattari. In Psychoanalysis and transversality, two texts will be studied: The nine thesis of leftist opposition, by which we declared that we do not share the analysis of the French communist party about the classes assemblage in France and in the world, and urged to change this analysis of political struggle. The second text will be Machine and structure which opens up a big path om the side of the official marxism of that time, that is the marxism of Louis Althusser. We said that there is not a last overdetermination in infrastructure, that revolution can come from minor problems making their trajectory in society. Then I shall examine the « machine de guerre » concept as worldwide nomadic organisation of all minor subjects that capitalism tries but does not manage to incorporate for its own sake. Last I shall come back on the molecular revolution and on the slogan of 68 created by Guattari: « We are all groupuscules" In the whole paper, the practical experience in political groups with Guattari, will be examined, as well as the concepts developed wiyj reference to practice, trying to think the relation between thought and practice.

Anne Querrien is sociologist and political scientist by education, activist by practice. She participate with Felix Guattari in the foundation of CERFI, centre d’études, de recherches et de formation institutioonnelles, and in the creation of the journal Recherches in 1965. She was coeditor of research and practive journals Education Permanente and Vivre en France from 1968 until 1972. Full time in CERFI from 1972 until 1979 she participated in research on collelctive services, specially school and training activities, participative urbanism. From 1985 until 2010 she was the editor of the journal Les Annales de la Recherche urbaine. Since 2000 she is member of the editorial board of the journal Multitudes, of which she is co-editor since 2008. Since 2010 she is also member of the editorial board of the journal Chimères, founded by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in 1986. She has published a lot of papers in all the journals mentionned here, but also in others, related to education, training, urbanism, feminism. She is the author of « L’école mutuelle, une pédagogie trop efficace ? », Les empêcheurs de penser en rond/Editions du Seuil, Paris, 2004.

Querrien.Anne@wanadoo.fr



Christine Quinan, Transgender Border Crossings: Airports, Assemblages, and the War Machine”


This paper focuses on the airport as a site of both violence and resistance for gender nonconforming and transgender travelers. I make use of Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of (1) “assemblage” to discuss the airport as a gathering of networks, agents, and machines that are both productive and destructive and (2) “the war machine” to examine the resistance strategies deployed by those subjected to gendered security apparatuses when passing through borders. In examining how hostility towards gender transgression changes or intensifies during moments of nationalism, racism, and geopolitical violence, I will engage with Deleuze and Guattari’s work to ask broader questions: What can the experiences of gender-variant and transgender individuals tell us about policing and surveillance in a post-9/11 era? What happens when those who may not clearly fit binaristic gender categories pass through – or attempt to pass through – borders? And how does the nation-state respond to national subjects who deviate?



Christine Quinan teaches in the Gender Studies Programme at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and works at the intersection of postcolonial studies and gender/sexuality studies. Christine is currently at work on a project that investigates gender policing and surveillance in a post-9/11, postcolonial/neocolonial era and the effects this has on gender-nonconforming and transgender bodies and lives. Christine’s broad teaching and research interests include gender studies, postcolonial studies, quee r theory, contemporary literature and film, and feminist/queer pedagogy.

C.l.Quinan@uu.nl