GM:Yes, of course, since for example, in America, this identitarian desire
that you discuss, this identitarian necessity, gets stronger every day in my
view and to my great embarrassment and fear, finally in the sense that there
is this profound sense of belonging to a church, to a race; people close them-
selves into these groups where they demand that the other be like us. And I
wonder if schizoanalysis as Guattari developed it ... that is, if we are not
now in another reactionary phase ...Bifo:Well I myself think so. That is, it’s clear that what was happening
in America in the last few years ...GM:But also in Europe ...Bifo:It’s clear, the reaction to the events in London [the bomb-
ings of July 2005] is impressive in this sense: it’s different from
Madrid ... Madrid had the effect of increasing understanding. The train
station bombing in Madrid allowed the Spanish to understand that
if we wage war, we are entering into a very dangerous and brutal
situation.GM:Yes, and in fact, the Spanish understood that.Bifo:And this helped all Europeans to open their minds to an
absolutely obvious thing, absolutely elementary. However, the
London events caused us to undersand that Islamic terrorism
can become a nearly daily fact of life. Even in the technical modal-
ities of this operation: this was not an operation of great
complexity ...GM:Yes, it was not like the Twin Towers, where at least you had to coor-
dinate the plane schedules ...Bifo:Yes, in London there was nothing to coordinate! You just have to
place low-yield bombs and you are still going to kill people, no matter
how. So there is this perception of the fact that it’s something that can
be multiplied infinitely. Now, faced however with this, instead of
reducing tension, instead of saying ‘We have to avoid a growing identi-
tarion counter-position, because this is causing our deaths, not just
theirs’, instead you see what the reaction is? The reaction is to say, ‘OK,
systematically they want to kill us, so systematically we are going to
kill them’. So now ...166 Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography9780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 166