War machine and disruptive technology: investigation of the fringe
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How to Cite

Nikolić, L. (2021). War machine and disruptive technology: investigation of the fringe. Mechane, (1), 75-87. Retrieved from https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/mechane/article/view/1270

Abstract

Deleuze and Guattari (1986) famously launched the concept of the war machine, characterized by the double externality. First, it is considered as outside of the State apparatus, challenging the sovereignty in traditional terms. Second, it is external to the military institution, without an inherent order, discipline or convergence. The main task of every State is to (re)appropriate the war machine through a set of various enunciative assemblages. On the other side, technological disruption of the State has been studied in a rather redundant manner. Clayton Christensen (1997; 2013) has been leading the school of those who scaled down disruption to the level of economic efficiency and profit-driven model. Accordingly, technology is just a rational choice of the apparatus to satisfy the need to follow the market. A different approach, a two-way process needs to be adopted to describe the interdependence of technology and state apparatus.
This paper claims that a State can’t appropriate a fringe element because, at the moment when it does, it stops being fringe. War machine without being external turns out to be nothing more than a piece of the bureaucratic puzzle. Disruptive technology-adjusted to the needs of an apparatus is as fertile and systemic as it could possibly be. Both phenomena need their alienated positions to retain the purpose. Finally, it is necessary to consider a prospective dangerous romance between the war machine and disruptive technology. The former lacks capacity to challenge the cocooned sovereignty, while the latter lacks the platform upon which disruption would be disruptive. Consequently, the ultimate proposal of this paper is a mutually beneficial bricolage on the ontological periphery.

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