MDDM23: Prolegomena

[Dave Monroe]

>From Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (trans. Brian
Massumi, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987) ...

1. Introduction: Rhizome

  "A rhizome as a subterranean stem is absolutely
different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers
are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may be
rhizomorphic in other respects altogether. Burrows are
too, in all their functions of shelter, supply,
movement, evasion, and breakout. The rhizome itself
assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface
extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs
and tubers ... The rhizome includes the best and the
worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed." (pp. 6-7)

2. 1914: Two or Several Wolves

   "Write to the nth power, N-1, write with slogans:
Form rhizomes and not roots, never plant! Don't sow,
forage! Be neither a One nor a Many, but
multiplicities! Form a line, never a point! Speed
transforms the point into a line. Be fast, even while
standing still! Line of chance, line of hips, line of
flight. Don't arouse the General in yourself! Not an
exact idea, but just as idea (Godard). Have short-term
ideas. Make maps, not photographs or drawings. Be the
Pink Panther, and let your loves be like the wasp and
the orchid, the cat and the baboon. As they sing of
old man river:

He don't plant 'tatos
Don't plant cotton
Them that plants them is soon forgotten
But old man river he just keeps rollin' along.

"A rhizome doesn't begin and doesn't end, but is
always in the middle, between things, interbeing,
intermezzo.  The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is
alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb
'to be,' but the fabric of the rhizome is conjunction,
'and . . . and . . . and' This conjunction carries
enough force to shake and uproot the verb 'to be.'
Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What
are you heading for? These are totally useless
questions." (pp. 24-5)

http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/courses/liu/english165HL/materials/class12notes.html

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com