Theory is a Weapon
This week we discover how dangerous theory can be depending on who wields the weapons of theory. Weapons, Christian Girard explains, are concepts, combatants are those we habitually call theoreticians, and the battlegrounds in question are often located between conflicting theories, or theoretical frameworks. The problem today, it would seem, is that theory often degenerates into ‘instant theory’, composed of sound bytes and jargon. When theory is deployed this way it becomes more exclusive (if you don’t know what I mean when I utter my jargon, then you are excluded from the conversation), and at the same time more empty of potential (how can we use a concept, if we can’t in the first place pass it round, or communicate what we can do with it!).
Eyal Weizman shows us how theory is not only a weapon in a metaphorical sense, but how it can really be employed in the midst of urban warfare. Weizman examines, in detail, the use by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of concepts borrowed from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (and other ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers), as well as from the Situationist International. He demonstrates how concepts such as smooth vs striated space, dérive and détournement, are used to develop stealthy and very material means to infiltrate Palestinian settlements or camps, for instance, by quite literally ‘walking through walls’, and reinterpreting the space of the city.
This disturbing use of theory is no reason to place theory to the side, but instead displays that theory can have a very real material impact. Theory is not merely composed of the clever words we enunciate after the fact of the built form, or a passive mode of reflection…it is as powerful as the sledgehammer that can knock down a wall. Pay attention to how you wield your conceptual weaponry!
Another essay that is well worth reading with respect to this idea of theory being a weapon and/or a tool is:
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, trans. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977).
Eyal Weizman: Lethal Theory / Christian Girard: Weaponry Theory
