Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Deleuze and Guattari advance that societies function according to flows of desire, which the State Apparatus both creates and canalises. In the global north – and increasingly in the global South – transnational capitalism has successfully created and channelled desires towards consumerism predicated on resource extractive practices, and these desires have been (re)produced and (re)enforced by repressive and ideological transnational state (TNS) apparatuses, ranging from international policing institutions to the global mass media (Robinson, 2014). In such societies of control almost everything has the potential to become commodified, and correlatively, alternative desires – from concern over the environment to sexual orientations resistant to commodification have tended to be marginalised when they have not been reterritorialised by TNS apparatuses, including the mass media in particular. However, through digital media nomadic war machines, flows of desire otherwise canalised by TNS apparatuses have been disrupted and new desires have been created providing society with lines of flight from the status quo. In what follows, after discussing Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens’ ecosex movement, their online videos depicting their weddings to the Appalachian Mountains, the sun, the sea, and the sky will be advanced as digital nomadic war machines that reterritorialise sexuality and nature. It will be argued that through this reterritorialisation, the films offer a radical line of flight from molar perceptions of sexuality and nature, through utilising contemporary society’s obsession with sexuality to effect environmental care and activism.