Minor Politics, Territory, and Occupy

The following is the text of a talk given at Occupy London’s School of Ideas as part of a workshop called ‘Deleuze and Guattari and Occupy’, 25 February 2012. A little context may be instructive. Having moved from the Bank of Ideas in an occupied UBS office, the School of Ideas was situated in a spacious and attractive school building that had been left vacant for three years prior to its occupation. Two days after this talk the School of Ideas was evicted in a coordinated move with the eviction of the main Occupy London camp at St. Paul's Cathedral (at over four months, the world’s longest running of the 750 camps that sprung up in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, the Spanish Indignados, and the Arab Spring). Upon eviction, the School of Ideas was immediately bulldozed – a fitting emblem of the wanton destruction that characterises the current round of neoliberal restructuring and public service cuts.