The position of the nomad is usually identified as being against the State in premodern forms of social organization, and beyond the State in postmodernity. This is what facilitates the easy identification of postmodern mobility with nomadic crossings. However, nomadism and nomadology are as little 'against the State' in absolute terms, as 'society against the State' (of Pierre Clastres' description), or (in more recent conceptualizations of social movements) as the constituent power of the multitudes is. The State is always on the horizon of nomadism and nomadology. Along the fault lines of these forces running counter to each other, philosophy charts its conceptual breakthroughs and theoretical revolutions, the conditions of genealogy and critique. On the basis of this consideration, I would like to challenge the opposition, drawn by Deleuze and Guattari, and following them, numerous other theorists of postmodernity and postcoloniality, between state thinkers and nomadic thinkers. I would like to show how the figure of the State remains central to both. Furthermore, I would like to show that the relation between nomadism and the State that makes for the connection between nomadism and nomadology is not simply a figure by which metaphors can be coined or analogies established. The connection between a mode of social organization and a system of thought will be shown not to rely on nomadism as a societal principle organized in opposition to the State or as a mode of production. This paper will look at the role of the 'Urstaat' in Deleuze and Guattari's universal-historical account as a model integrally tied up with nomadism, as a model that does not correspond to a mode of production, as a model that is theoretically indispensable for an account of modes of psychic and social repression which also involves the relationship of philosophy to the State.
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