From the invention of identity by the nation-state to the notion of singularity

Abstract

Based on the conceptual framework of the Political Philosophy of Difference, this article seeks to understand how identities are constituted as tools for establishing control and subjection over bodies subjected to capture. It discusses the process of subject production within Integrated World Capitalism, whose primary instrument for the operation of its machine of capture is the nation-state. This entity functions as a phantom within a political ceiling, tethering bodies to chains of signification and specific circuits of affect in order to invent identities and determine ways of life. In response to this machinic process, the article conjectures movements that surpass mechanisms of capture and the identities invented by nation-states through the concept of singularity. Such movements enable the experimentation of direct modes of presence and expression capable of rehearsing processes of decoupling bodies from the capture imposed upon them.