The Rhizomatic West

[Dave Monroe]

The Rhizomatic West
Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age
Neil Campbell

hardcover
2008. 392 pp.
14 photographs, index
978-0-8032-1539-9


Is the American West in Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns” the same
American West we find in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X? In Jim
Jarmusch’s movies? In Calexico’s music? Or is the American West, as
this book tells us, a constantly moving, mutating idea within a
complex global culture? And what, precisely (or better yet,
imprecisely) does it mean?

Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, Neil
Campbell shows how the West (or west-ness) continually breaks away
from a mainstream notion of American “rootedness” and renews and
transforms itself in various cultural forms. A region long traversed
by various transient peoples (from tribes and conquerors to
immigrants, traders, and trappers), the West reflects a mythic quest
for settlement, permanence, and synthesis—even notions of a national
or global identity—at odds with its rootless history, culture, and
nature. Crossing the concept of “roots” with “routes,” this book shows
how notions of the West—in representations ranging from literature and
film to photography, music, and architectural theory—give expression
to ideas about identity, nationhood, and belonging in a world
increasingly defined by movement across time and borders. The
Rhizomatic West offers a new vision of the American West as a hybrid,
performative space, a staging place for myriad intersecting and
constantly changing identities.

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Rhizomatic-West,673290.aspx

Introduction: Theorizing the Rhizomatic West

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/supplements/Excerpts/Spring%2008/9780803215399_excerpt.pdf

Postwestern Horizons

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/Catalog/ProductSearch.aspx?ExtendedSearch=false&SearchOnLoad=true&rhl=Postwestern+Horizons&sj=743&rhdcid=743