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Deterritorialization

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Deterritorialization is the process of decentering or unmooring from established structures—geographic, linguistic, or psychological. It enables reconfiguration and escape.

Detailed Definition
Poetry uses deterritorialization to disrupt norms of form, syntax, or identity. Through fragmentation, code-switching, or surreal leaps, poems create spaces of exile or invention where language escapes codification—mirroring philosophical quests for freedom beyond fixed territories of thought or nation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Derek Walcott’s Omeros deterritorializes Homeric epic into Caribbean seascape and patois; Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands poetry blends English, Spanish, and myth to escape linguistic borders; Kamau Brathwaite’s “Calypso” uses nation language to break colonial meter; C.D. Wright’s One Big Self deterritorializes documentary poetics through prison voices; Ocean Vuong’s Time Is a Mother fractures linear time and identity through queerness and loss; M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! deterritorializes legal text into sonic, non-linear lament.
Additional Notes
Deterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari) is the unmooring from fixed territories—linguistic, national, or psychic. In poetry, it appears as code-switching (Anzaldúa), fragmented syntax (Creeley), or mythic displacement (Walcott). It’s not loss but potential: deterritorialization enables reterritorialization elsewhere. Professors can use it to analyze diasporic, queer, or experimental poetics that refuse stable identity. Contrast with exile (which mourns loss) or hybridity (which blends): deterritorialization is processual, not positional. Related to becoming-other and rhizome.
Also Known As
Reterritorialization complement De-territorialization
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