A Deleuzian critique of resource-use management politics in Industria

In an era of increasingly well‐attended and violent protests around the world against globalisation, this commentary seeks to answer the crucial question: The globalisation of what? The answer proposed is that what is globalising is ‘Industria’, a multiplicitous, global system of power/knowledge, a vast ‘machinic assemblage’ recently accreted from diverse, competing world systems. After describing some of the most serious challenges facing human communities and the rest of the biosphere, the commentary enlists the aid of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his colleague Félix Guattari to expose the cognitive errors underlying political and environmental problems. Applying Deleuze's philosophy of difference to geopolitics and resource‐use management, it is shown that representational epistemologies and a negative ontology of identity obscure the myriad interconnections among human and non‐human beings, leading to conflict and ecological degradation. From there, the ‘Industria’ hypothesis is presented as a conceptual response to Deleuze and Guattari's critique of the ‘Urstaat’ and as a framework for scholars grappling with the need to achieve socioeconomic and ecological sustainability. Finally, the commentary briefly explores the potential of a differential, bioregional geopolitics as a civilised alternative to the predations of Industria.