I've been reading the posts for some time now, and until now have felt it
best to watch from the sidelines. I did read "Rhizome" and found it
immensely interesting. And since Michael Current has suggested that we
move on soon, I wanted to put in a word or two.
Quite a while back Michael solicited remarks about what it's like for a
newcomer to read the essay. I'd read large chunks of Anti-Oedipus, mostly
last year on the trains in Japan -- nothing like the trains for making you
sit down and read something -- and felt pretty inadequate through that
entire enterprise. "Rhizome" started to make me feel the same way. "Oh,
no, not again" was how I felt. But I came back to it a number of times,
and it started to work for me. You've seen those 3-D images that you stare
at until an image forms? Well it was something like that. A plane of
consistency started to form. And I don't know if you've noticed it with
the 3-D images or not, but when you look away, everything else kind of
looks different, too. D&G do that to me at times. Not always, but at
times.
I don't mean to trivialize the effect by making this silly analogy.
Indeed, I take the texts and what everyone says on this list very
seriously. In fact *the* question for me is what, when one starts to hear
the machines humming and see the grids, does one do? Especially an
academic animal like me and many of you. Foucault raises the same
questions for me. To provide a concrete example, do D&G help us in any to
know how to act when we witness, say, the recent rise to legitimate
political power of a right wing/fascist coalition in Italy, or, for that
matter, racist brutality on our own streets? Of course I read them and you
folks because I think the potential for there being some answers here does
exist, much more than in 99% of the other stuff I read. It's a question
I'd like to see people who've thought about it address in the course of our
readings. I think Jonathan Beasley Murray has already wondered aloud about
this too. Academic conferences and internet lists can be productive, but
they can also be very narcissistic. Why do I always end up sounding so
cynical? I didn't mean to be.
I wanted also to point people in the direction of a great bibliography of
D&G primary and secondary materials. It's part of a series called "Social
Theory: A Bibliographic Series" put out by a company called References and
Research Services, and is about 60 pages long with sections on books by D
and G, essays, reviews, dissertations, etc. It came out in 1991.
Also, a suggestion for our next reading: how about "10,000 B.C.: The
Geology of Morals." They introduce a lot of key terms there.
Bob (who has no signature file yet)
------------------
best to watch from the sidelines. I did read "Rhizome" and found it
immensely interesting. And since Michael Current has suggested that we
move on soon, I wanted to put in a word or two.
Quite a while back Michael solicited remarks about what it's like for a
newcomer to read the essay. I'd read large chunks of Anti-Oedipus, mostly
last year on the trains in Japan -- nothing like the trains for making you
sit down and read something -- and felt pretty inadequate through that
entire enterprise. "Rhizome" started to make me feel the same way. "Oh,
no, not again" was how I felt. But I came back to it a number of times,
and it started to work for me. You've seen those 3-D images that you stare
at until an image forms? Well it was something like that. A plane of
consistency started to form. And I don't know if you've noticed it with
the 3-D images or not, but when you look away, everything else kind of
looks different, too. D&G do that to me at times. Not always, but at
times.
I don't mean to trivialize the effect by making this silly analogy.
Indeed, I take the texts and what everyone says on this list very
seriously. In fact *the* question for me is what, when one starts to hear
the machines humming and see the grids, does one do? Especially an
academic animal like me and many of you. Foucault raises the same
questions for me. To provide a concrete example, do D&G help us in any to
know how to act when we witness, say, the recent rise to legitimate
political power of a right wing/fascist coalition in Italy, or, for that
matter, racist brutality on our own streets? Of course I read them and you
folks because I think the potential for there being some answers here does
exist, much more than in 99% of the other stuff I read. It's a question
I'd like to see people who've thought about it address in the course of our
readings. I think Jonathan Beasley Murray has already wondered aloud about
this too. Academic conferences and internet lists can be productive, but
they can also be very narcissistic. Why do I always end up sounding so
cynical? I didn't mean to be.
I wanted also to point people in the direction of a great bibliography of
D&G primary and secondary materials. It's part of a series called "Social
Theory: A Bibliographic Series" put out by a company called References and
Research Services, and is about 60 pages long with sections on books by D
and G, essays, reviews, dissertations, etc. It came out in 1991.
Also, a suggestion for our next reading: how about "10,000 B.C.: The
Geology of Morals." They introduce a lot of key terms there.
Bob (who has no signature file yet)
------------------