File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0412, message 26


Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:08:27 +1100 (EST)
From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Rhizome


Hey Steven,

Perhaps some good advice (From Badiou's book an Deleuze, although you
certainly figure it out for yourself after a while) when beginning
Deleuze is that Deleuze continually deploys modulations of his
virtual/actual couplet. The couplet is of course tempered by which ever
multiplicity or assemblage is being placed in the Deleuzian centrifuge.

The rhizome is not a metaphor (they say somewhere, I think AO or maybe
ATP, horribly paraphrasing "We do not speak in metaphors.") in the sense
that D&G are trying to explain something. It is more a trigger in the
sense they want you to think something. Ian Buchanan has talked about it
in terms of there always being 'two books' in any of D and D&G's
(especially D&G's) books. The book constituted by words on the page, and
the book that was not written but is fully real.

I would argue you should take a transversal jump to the pages in
Nomadology on the Royal vs minor science. The book is an attempt to turn
an essentially linear communication mode (words on the page) into a
non-linear or hypertextual transmission of sense. In fact, I would begin
with the Nomadology chapter, then the one after (apparatus of capture??
i think), then return to Rhizomes.  Just skim the pages so some of the
ideas jump out at you, do not bother doing a close-reading. It will
appear to be a rather crappy anthopological essay without having been
bolstered by other parts of the book. (The same goes for the rhizome
chapter (originally published as a separate essay and then joined for
the English edition) and I am suggesting the chapter on
Nomadology/Capture because they do the most bolstering.) 

ATP is a challenging book because it needs (no, it _demands_) to be read
a number of times in a number of different ways.

If you want to cheat!!! Just grab Deleuze's interview books: Dialogues
and Negotiations, and Guattari's Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic
Paradigm. [MOst secondary literature is good Buchanan, Patton, Massumi,
etc. but there is so much you might not ever get to D&G there is so much
around now!!!] Then tackle ATP.

It is very hard to start I think, everything has to kind of be
downloaded at once. And then forgotten, and then remembered in the terms
of your own project/thoughts. I have been reading Deleuze's stuff
solidly for about 2 years, between other more pressing texts, and my
brain hurts. I tried to explain the virtual/actual couplet to someone
the other day and it made me realise how little I actually know or am
comfortable with. 

Ciao,
Glen.

> All --
> 
> I've started working through the trenches of D and G and thought I
would get 
> out some ideas on the rhizome. (I'm also on a couple of other lists, but 
> this one, although Lyotard, has engaging exchanges, and also occasionally 
> refers to D and G.) I have begun _1000 Plateaus_ but felt it best to
go back 
> to _Anti-Oedipus_ and then move on from there...
> 
> So, the Rhizome -- this seems to be an investigative metaphor, but I am 
> unsure if it is 'classified' as a research method such as 'realism,' 
> 'positivism,' 'postmodernism,' or what have you. It seems to allows for a 
> sort of intellectual reconnisance -- diversive and unbound. There also
seems 
> to be some postmodernism tied to it, as it offers no grounded standpoint 
> from which to view, rather many standpoints and many 'truths.' I
realize I 
> am trying to get into the rhizomatic method in one paragraph but there
seems 
> to be a wealth of investigative power there and I want to get my head
around 
> it.
> 
> Any talks or hints or suggestions would be grand.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Steven. 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
PhD Candidate 
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney

Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/


   

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