http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735921.001.0001/acprof-9780199735921-chapter-2
Territorialization and deterritorialization are concepts that seem to be taken up here in a different manner. Perhaps we can discuss how they differ? Or how they are similar to Deleuze & Guattari's? Reading this has got me thinking about how musicology (or media studies for that matter) engages these philosophical concepts.
In Reggae on the Border, Alvarez argues:
"that border reggae helps its participants claim dignity in the face of the dehumanizing effects of global economic and political patterns. There is often an intricate relationship between border reggae and social movements, lending support to cultural critic George Yúdice's contention that some cultural practices and venues have the potential to be turned into resources that might “be (p.21) mobilized in the pursuit of social justice under certain circumstances.”2 Border reggae is thus one example of how globalization operates in the form of everyday cultural and political expression as much as it does in the activity of transnational corporations and nation-states. Rather than assume border identities and communities are liminal, deterritorialized, and displaced from concrete movements for social change, border reggae shows us they are deeply rooted, deeply territorialized, and deeply placed in local relationships, cultural politics, and efforts for social transformation along the extended U.S.-Mexico border.3"
Reggae on the Border The Possibilities of a Frontera Soundscape
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735921.003.0002
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter investigates the political and cultural possibilities and limits of the wide-ranging reggae scene that has emerged along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border since the 1990s. It investigates why and how members of seemingly disparate border communities, including Mexicanas/os, Chicanas/os, and Native Americans, find common social and political ground playing Afro-Caribbean inspired music. It also interrogates how people living in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have responded to the impact of economic and political globalization by using reggae to fashion multi-ethnic and post-national political formations and social relationships at the grassroots.
Great question, Ellie! I think people often use territorialization and deterritorialization as though they were opposites, when in fact for Deleuze and Guattari there is no absolute state of either. The question for them is what causes the shift from one to another. For them, a local relationship could be deterritorializing (around differences of religion, say) just as it might territorialize (around a sharing of music, say). So the issue isn't so much one or the other than how the passage operates, and what that operation does.
ReplyDeleteThanks Erin - your reply is very helpful.
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