DELEUZE AND GUATTARI: GEOPHILOSOPHY AND HISTORICAL-GEOGRAPHICAL
NARRATIVES OF THE BALKANS
Abstract
Geophilosophy is a spatial concept that will be applied as a supplement
to the geographical method, with the aim of better understanding the
historical-geographical conditionality in the Central Balkans, its
political-geographical evolution and the variability of
regional-geographical forms. As a philosophical concept, geophilosophy
was created by Deleuze and Guattari (1995) at the end of their
scientific careers. From their philosophical point of view, Tampio
(2014), Protevi (2010), Parr (2010), and others wrote about their work.
This concept also has its geographical dimension, and significant
results have been written about it by Woodward (2017), Bonta (2010),
Peet (1998), and others. All these authors emphasize the importance of
the book A Thousand Plateaus (2013). A form of new materialism with a
politicized “philosophy of differences” was successfully developed,
and in which the meaning of geophilosophy is created through the
superposition of layers of thought. Although indications of
geophilosophy can be recognized in Nietzsche’s works, and the whole
concept can be interpreted as a philosophical aspect of geographical
(geological) processes, this concept has a far more complex meaning
(poststructuralism). This paper aims to apply geophilosophy as a method
in interpreting complex historical-geographical processes, which, in
addition to their complexity and long duration, can also indicate their
certain regularity. The theoretical basis for this approach is sought
through Deleuze’s and Guattari’s (1995: 121) view of the importance of
the milieu, the notion through which they show that “philosophy is a
certain geophilosophy just as, in Braudel’s view, history is a certain
geohistory” and that to present through ancient Greece (allusion to the
past of philosophy), modern Europe (present philosophy), while the
process of emergence represents the future of philosophy. Lundy (2011:
116) interprets this so that exceptional geographical circumstances
determine the nature of thought and that the nature of each milieu is as
historical as it is geographical. In this paper, the miles of ancient
Greece will be transposed to the neighboring Balkans and then explained
through three processes (territorialization, deterritorialization, and
reterritorialization) that will produce recognizable historical and
geographical narratives.