OPERATIONALISING OTHERNESS
To use a geological analogy, the operation of the Zone can be elaborated as follows: The workings of plate tectonics [desiring-production] shape and organise the surface while remaining unnoticeable in immediate observation. Fault lines [Zones] then constitute critical points which inhibit or bring about conditions under which those forces that otherwise remain underground [dispersed], suddenly and violently erupt, collapsing the division between surface [territory] and sub-surface [external political economy] and bring to light rocks [zonefacts], which introduce an absolute otherness while being paradigmatic of the processes below ground. These new objects then establish a new territorial logic, re-organising pre-existing space around their existence.
To give form and structure to the discussion above, it becomes tempting to make use of a geological analogy. The dynamism of the Earth’s crust and thus the surface of the Earth is animated and organised by the working of plate tectonics which by themselves escape perception of a common observer. It is at fault lines however, that forces which largely remain underground, come to light through sudden and violent eruption, spewing out new rocks and re-arranging the existing ones to leave often strange, specific and often distinct traces. Replacing “plate tectonics” with an external political economy, “fault lines” with zones and “rocks” with zonefacts, the proposition is to understand the operation of the Zone as a paradigmatic eruption of absolute otherness. Most importantly in this discussion is that the Zone brings to light objects that introduce an absolute otherness while remaining paradigmatic to the processes “below ground.”
Inevitably, one is faced with the crucial question: how does one conduct practice within this context? For that the proposed strategy is to operationalise otherness. Just as scientists in Strugatsky’s novel were trying to instrumentalise alien objects for the development of novel technology, the idea is to make use, to graft oneself onto the landscape of otherness produced through the operation of the Zone. First, simply by operating with the otherness of zonefacts, one is able to problematise the paradigm of desiring-production that they inhibit, to uncover the workings of the constitutive political economy. Consequently, then, one can open up the formerly defined, goal-oriented operation of the Zone by introducing strategic programme that makes use of its apparatus in novel ways. If before, the Zone had been scrupulously assembled to ensure the proliferation of specific conditions as desired by the political economy shaping it, one could, instead of diving into an utopian ideological holy war with the aim to take down the system itself, practice critique with and within the system. Instead of wasting resources on an all-out revolution to bring down the leviathan of the political-economic order, the ambition is to make use of the spatial software, its resources and infrastructures to operate the system pharmacologically – not just poison but remedy, not just control but emancipation, not just accumulation but redistribution.