File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0412, message 38


From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Thu,  9 Dec 2004 10:59:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Rhizome



> 
> Gvcharter mentioned the Gainesville area in Florida and this got me thinking
> 
> about a forest, for the life of me I cannot recall which one, but apparently
> 
> it has been understood as having the largest interconnected root system --  
> perhaps that world's largest organism, next to the Gaia hypothesis, I 
> assume. There may be some sort of interesting analogy lying here... arguably
> 
> my research is not about 'living' matter so to speak but about narrative 
> manifestations in urbanity, yet perhaps a D and G feared metaphor is out 
> there somewhere.

Steve, 

Right, Gainesville to Gaia... living matter and urban narrative... Is there 
some sort of inter/face here?  

Manuel De Landa, in a Deleuzian book about living matter and urbanism called _A 
Thousand Years of Nonlinear History_ has this line concerning the "BwO formed 
by teh underground rodent city" that have "escaped urbanization" (262).

Rats, of course, are crabgrass, weeds.  

Where are the weeds in one's urban narrative?  

You know, I have had this idea for an art exhibit that I'll one day get around 
to but it is to go around to deserted malls and use GPS or some other 
technology to map out all the weeds that have filled in all the crevices.  
Next, I'll digitally take out all sense of these husks and hulls of these big 
box shopping complexes and show something of the seams that have taken place.

The urban narrative, it seems to me, is in these seams, these underground 
rodent cities, the roots of banyan-rhizomes that are but roots above and below 
ground such that get entangled in power and sewer lines... Indeed, there are 
parts of Florida that has begun making cell phone transformers in the shape of 
trees, and what are we with our cell phones but birds calling to each 
other: "Where are you?"  "I am over here."  "Where are you?"  "I am over 
here."  (NPR ran a nice story about cell phone-birds recently.)

Analogy?  D & G are strange in not thinking about language as "metaphor," and 
if one reads _Diff and Rep_ closely one will find an aversion to the 
word "analogy" too...  

Geof



 



     

   

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