I saw this subject header and thought: excellent, fairy rhizomes--in all
sense of faeries--Celtic, radical and queer. Faeries stick to the ground;
they are indistinguishable from the undergrowth; they upset filiation by
stealing children; they're liminal; and their dimunitive frames make them
the perfect size to practice micro-politics.
I suggest one possible avenue to unfold the Rhizome chapter, one close to
home (since most of us I assume are writers, net-junkies or at least books
addicts): what does it mean to reject books "as an image of the world"
and to make the book rhizomatic, no longer a tree-book (the generic book),
nor even a "radicle-system" (modernism, or the fragmentation which ends up
positing an unknown unity, like N.'s eternal return). What is the book
written "as assemblage with the outside"?
Just one point, and then I've got to sit down and follow my breath for an
hour (hopefully going so far "in" that "I" dissolve and--magic!--unfold into a
dazzling Outside, the plenitude of void, whoopee!). We are writing such a
book now, here on the internet. Hypertext is such a rhizomatic book. Is
this page I'm writing an inside or an outside? It's already outside, out
in the open, linked. Or in a hypertext system, each page--space, sign,
glyph--is linked to many others. Though we are nestled in a certain
cubby-hole (ah! here it is, etc), we have not entered into the special
interiority of the book, becuse that space is already linked to another
outside, already proliferated. If not, it's boring--where do I go from
here? What, no links? It's a dead end.
And how do I feel when I'm reading such a book--how am "I" rewritten? I
feel like a navigator in a rich fog. I am an assemblage of partial maps,
rules of thumb (this may lead to this, etc), the passion of my own vector.
As the cliche goes, I surf. Horizontal, a vector, not "left or right"--and
up and down is just the swelling of a save. I feel up when I get a sense
of overseeing a realm of knowledge--that old view from the holy hill. But
immediately I'm swamped by a swell, and the peak I was just on has become
a valley, a deep trough of unknowing. I'm terrifed; I move.
This is hard. The Internet is hard. Hypertext is frustrating--most of them
are bad, unimaginative. Why? "Why is this so difficult? The question is
directly one of perceptual semiotics. It's not easy to see things in the
middle, rather than looking down on them from above or up at them from
below, of from left to right or right to left: try it, you'll see that
everything changes." (MP, 23)
That's what happens with Deleuze, with reading D&G: we don't suddenly "get
it"--we just wake up one day and everything changes. We can't go back; our
friends and colleagues look at us oddly; we suddenly find compatriots,
thosho'v seen everything change by altering their "perceptual semiotics"
(psychedelics, anyone?). But it's not a secret, not some key or code; it's
ranging everywhere, out in the open, on the outside of domain.
[__]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[__]
[] Erik Davis (oo) Cernunnos sez (cribbing the Fall): The only []
[] erikd@xxxxxxxxx __ thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes. []
[__]==================== ww ==============================================[__]
------------------