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even if the boundaries between war and politics have of late become more blurred, they remain at the heart of the political imaginary of the modern liberal state. Defended as a bulwark against the militarization of society by some critics and denounced as a fantasy by others, the differentiation of war and politics is widely regarded as a cornerstone of the modern political order. Conceptually, it makes possible the ideology of a social order governed by law and legitimate authority rather than force and violence; institutionally, it stipulates the separation of instru- ments and practices of government and warfare, sundering the kinds of knowledges and rationalities appropriate to each.
Niccolò Machiavelli is frequently cited as a political theorist whose work collapses the distinction between politics and war (Wood 1967; Brown 2004; Galli 2009). Commentators have argued that Machiavelli treats politics as an analogue of war (Dietz 1986; Lefort 1986; Merleau-Ponty 1960; Faraklas 1997) and as fundamentally insep- arable from war (Sasso 1958, 422; Fournel and Zancarini 2000, 7).1 In what follows, I propose to investigate this ostensible civil-military con- tinuum in light of Machiavelli's military writings, specifically his Art of War (2003, henceforth cited as AW). Machiavelli's Art of War shares the fate of many historical military treatises: even if it has recently garnered more interest (Hörnqvist 2010; Lynch 2010), it is often ig- nored and neglected by readers focused on the more obviously political texts. A re-examination of Machiavelli's military writings complicates the picture of the war-politics relation: it is not war that functions as the paradigm for politics but vice versa. Machiavelli treats war as a profoundly political practice and the military as the site of potential political upheaval and popular revolt.
My interpretation of Machiavelli's military writings highlights two features. First, war for Machiavelli is not a unified field of action that is superposed onto politics but a disparate and heterogeneous patchwork of practices, routines, and disciplines. The art of war, in turn, consists in carefully orchestrating, coordinating, and represent- ing bodies and movements, a practice, in short, that relies more on public performances and the production of appearance than on brute force. Second, Machiavelli's substantive recommendation to recruit a popular militia (as opposed to mercenary forces) is part of his popu-...