The Maritime Model. Of course, there are points, lines, and surfaces in striated space as well as in smooth space (there are also volumes, but we will leave this question aside for the time being). In striated space, lines or trajectories tend to be subordinated to points: one goes from one point to another. In the smooth, it is the opposite: the points are subordinated to the trajectory. This was already the case among the nomads for the clothestent-space vector of the outside. The dwelling is subordinated to the journey; inside space conforms to outside space: tent, igloo, boat. There are stops and trajectories in both the smooth and the striated. But in smooth space, the stop follows from the trajectory; once again, the interval takes all, the interval is substance (forming the basis for rhythmic values).6 In smooth space, the line is therefore a vector, a direction and not a dimension or metric determination. It is a space constructed by local operations involving changes in direction. These changes in direction may be due to the nature of the journey itself, as with the nomads of the archipela——-1440: THE SMOOTH AND THE STRIATED D 479——goes (a case of “directed” smooth space); but it is more likely to be due to the variability of the goal or point to be attained, as with the nomads of the desert who head toward local, temporary vegetation (a “nondirected” smooth space). Directed or not, and especially in the latter case, smooth space is directional rather than dimensional or metric. Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one of properties. It is haptic rather than optical perception. Whereas in the striated forms organize a matter, in the smooth materials signal forces and serve as symptoms for them. It is an intensive rather than extensive space, one of distances, not of measures and properties. Intense Spatium instead of Extensio. A Body without Organs instead of an organism and organization. Perception in it is based on symptoms and evaluations rather than measures and properties. That is why smooth space is occupied by intensities, wind and noise, forces, and sonorous and tactile qualities, as in the desert, steppe, or ice.7 The creaking of ice and the song of the sands. Striated space, on the contrary, is canopied by the sky as measure and by the measurable visual qualities deriving from it. This is where the very special problem of the sea enters in. For the sea is a smooth space par excellence, and yet was the first to encounter the demands of increasingly strict striation. The problem did not arise in proximity to land. On the contrary, the striation of the sea was a result of navigation on the open water. Maritime space was striated as a function of two astronomical and geographical gains: bearings, obtained by a set of calculations based on exact observation of the stars and the sun; and the map, which intertwines meridians and parallels, longitudes and latitudes, plotting regions known and unknown onto a grid (like a Mendeleyev table). Must we accept the Portuguese argument and assign 1440 as the turning point that marked the first decisive striation, and set the stage for the great discoveries? Rather, we will follow Pierre Chaunu when he speaks of an extended confrontation at sea between the smooth and the striated during the course of which the striated progressively took hold.8 For before longitude lines had been plotted, a very late development, there existed a complex and empirical nomadic system of navigation based on the wind and noise, the colors and sounds of the seas; then came a directional, preastronomical or already astronomical, system of navigation employing only latitude, in which there was no possibility of “taking one’s bearings,” and which had only portolanos lacking “translatable generalization” instead of true maps; finally, improvements upon this primitive astronomical navigation were made under the very special conditions of the latitudes of the Indian Ocean, then of the elliptical circuits of the Atlantic (straight and curved spaces).9 It is as if the sea were not only the archetype——480 D 1440: THE SMOOTH AND THE STRIATED——of all smooth spaces but the first to undergo a gradual striation gridding it in one place, then another, on this side and that. The commercial cities participated in this striation, and were often innovators; but only the States were capable of carrying it to completion, of raising it to the global level of a “politics of science.“10 A dimensionality that subordinated directionality, or superimposed itself upon it, became increasingly entrenched. This is undoubtedly why the sea, the archetype of smooth space, was also the archetype of all striations of smooth space: the striation of the desert, the air, the stratosphere (prompting Virilio to speak of a “vertical coastline,” as a change in direction). It was at sea that smooth space was first subjugated and a model found for the laying-out and imposition of striated space, a model later put to use elsewhere. This does not contradict Virilio’s other hypothesis: in the aftermath of striation, the sea reimparts a kind of smooth space, occupied first by the “fleet in being,” then by the perpetual motion of the strategic submarine, which outflanks all gridding and invents a neonomadism in the service of a war machine still more disturbing than the States, which reconstitute it at the limit of their striations. The sea, then the air and the stratosphere, become smooth spaces again, but, in the strangest of reversals, it is for the purpose of controlling striated space more completely.11 The smooth always possesses a greater power of deterritorialization than the striated.