Nomad Citizenship

"This is a brilliant and important book which provides both vital insight into our contemporary political situation and, through a novel synthesis of nomad Marxism and complexity theory, ways for thinking the future differently. Eugene W. Holland’s conceptions of an affirmative nomadology and free market communism make a fresh and invigorating contribution to the contemporary critique of capital and attempts to produce small and large-scale, long-lasting alternatives to its dominion. A superb achievement and essential reading." —Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick

Nomad Citizenship argues for transforming our institutions and practices of citizenship and markets in order to release society from dependence on the state and capital. It changes Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of nomadology into a utopian project with immediate practical implications, developing ideas of a nonlinear Marxism and of the slow-motion general strike.

Responding to the challenge of creating philosophical concepts with concrete applications, Eugene W. Holland looks outside the state to analyze contemporary political and economic development using the ideas of nomad citizenship and free-market communism. Holland’s nomadology seeks to displace capital-controlled free markets with truly free markets. Its goal is to rescue market exchange, not perpetuate capitalism—to enable noncapitalist markets to coordinate socialized production on a global scale and, with an eye to the common good, to liberate them from capitalist control.

In suggesting the slow-motion general strike, Holland aims to transform citizenship: to renew, enrich, and invigorate it by supplanting the monopoly of state citizenship with plural nomad citizenships. In the process, he offers critiques of both the Clinton and Bush regimes in the broader context of critiques of the social contract, the labor contract, and the form of the state itself.

Eugene W. Holland is professor and chair of comparative studies at Ohio State University. He recently coedited Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text.

Contents

Preface
Introduction: Assays in Affirmative Nomadology

1. From Political Philosophy to Affirmative Nomadology
2. Death-State Citizenship
3. Nomad Citizenship
4. Free-Market Communism
Conclusion

Appendix: Nomadological and Dialectical Utopianism
Notes
Bibliography
Index