Deterritorialization

In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the process of reterritorialization.

The idea was developed and proposed in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. For instance, in Anti-Oedipus, they observe that the understanding of the psyche was revolutionized by Sigmund Freud's concepts of libido and polymorphous perversity, and thus the psyche was initially deterritorialized, but he then conceptualized a new territory, the Oedipus complex, an understanding of tension in the psyche that is in favor of repression, thus reterritorializing it. They also observed that capitalism is "the movement of social production that goes to the very extremes of its deterritorialization", and describe it as "the new massive deterritorialization, the conjunction of deterritorialized flows".

The idea has been applied to describe the shifting of social, cultural, economic and political practices, as well as of people, objects, languages, traditions and beliefs in relation to their respective originating bodies. Some theorists have adopted a literal understanding of the word, applying it to geographical territories and their respective relations.^{[citation needed]}