File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0412, message 40


Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 21:27:17 +0000
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Rhizome


Steven

the I&C issue was no 8 - from 1981. ISSN 03099156. Rhizome (first 
version from 1976, the version in ATP was substantially rewritten and 
published in 1980) translated Paul Foss and paul Patton, it was 
supported by a text by Colin Cordon 'the subtracting machine' and 'notes 
for a glossary' by Patton.

Deleuze/Guattari state somewhere that the Rhizome isn't a metaphor - but 
of course in 2004 it might be regarded as precisely that - a counter to 
the metaphor of the ever heirarchical tree '...the west has a priviliged 
relationship with the tree...'  they say. I often wonder re-reading D&G 
and those others who I've grown older with, how they'd feel about the 
priviliging of 'America' now that things have reached the end of the 
counter-reformation and we're back looking at America as something more 
problematic and oppressive again. It was always unforgivable for any 
intellectual to read D&G as if we lived in the same interior state as 
them - after all they instructed us to face the exterior which is why it 
was so easy to ignore the rank foolishness of statements such as 'the 
superiority of anglo-american literature'  (those bloody awful tortoise 
poems) or 'America is a special case...' -- oh Gilles, Felix people 
might believe actually you (I quote myself from 1981 it's scrawled on 
the edge of p61 - now that's painful...) I often feel reading articles 
on them that some people did.

The best joke in the entire sequence of D&G's joint works is the use of 
the Erica Jong toilet story - where she describes the differences 
between English, French and German toilets, the latter being designed so 
that Germans could inspect there shit - this Jong suggests (and D&G 
quote) is represenative of why Nazism was invented by Germans.  I have 
often wondered, as I sit in toilets in the US with their more German 
than German toilets and the complete absence of privacy with gaps 
carefully designed so that you can be casually observed through the 
designed spaces in the doors and walls - whether there may not be some 
element of truth in this strange toilet tale.

sorry i couldn't resist this  so as a plea for forgiveness : The best 
text written using Deleuze and Gauttari recently is without doubt Iain 
MacKenzie's 'The idea of pure critique' - as far as I'm aware the first 
attempt to construct them as modern, post-Kantian european philosophers. 
(I always think of Eric in relation to this book... because of the 
Kantian references )

rhizome, plateaux, immanence, difference, geo-philosophy and so on - all 
the same thing really... as lovely and sublime a philosophical concept 
as you can imagine.

steve


Steven Snell wrote:

> Glen, Steve, G et al. --
>
> First. I will find Badiou's book and have a go at it... by which I'm 
> sure will lead to another email sent out to the Lyotard group.
>
> Second. One could argue that I have a Hegelian dualism, or is that 
> dichotomy???, in my understanding of the rhizome, thus far. A wanker 
> pragmatic in me suggests that the rhizome just allows one to read a 
> bunch of stuff, searching for "no beginning, no end, only a middle", 
> synthesize it, and then hope for some sort of serendipitous new theory 
> or understanding of whatever context(s) I have been reading in. The 
> more academic, idealist, postmodernist, flaneur in me believes the 
> rhizome could be some fundamentally brilliant research method. It 
> allows for less restriction as in induction or deduction (although 
> Deleuze says he is both an empiricist and pluralist). It allows for a 
> sweeping, discursive deluge of information, that if captured well, 
> could bring to light some new speculations. Honestly, I'm hoping for 
> the later. Whether or not a supervisor or marker will see the same 
> light is yet to be determined.
>
> 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.
>
> I did I look for the journal 'ideology and consciousness' and came up 
> with nothing, even looked through jstor. And thank you Steven, I did 
> tune into Radio 3 and found the conversation quite interesting. I must 
> admit, I am adoring the diversity of media over here, not much like 
> that in Canada... one must look to State media to find that sort of 
> thing: ie, the anachronistic John Stewart -- brilliant!
>
> I must admit, as indirectly posited by Glen, that rhizomatic method 
> started to come together after about three of four glass of Burgundy.
>
> Oh, I started, today, looking through Dialogues be D and Parnet. 
> Interesting.
>
> Steven.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
> To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 11:08 PM
> 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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