Literary and Cultural Theory, 2013

Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.

The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).

Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)

Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?

Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?

Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.

The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).

Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)

Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?

Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?

I have to agree with everyone in saying that Derrida, is difficult to understand!
Here is one quote I found specially challenging “Differences are thus “produced” – differed — by differance” what does this mean? Well, what I understood is that is all a big circle of differences. This “differance” is what produces things, like language that is it is said that first there are differences and then the thing with out essence is visible!!! Still this was hard to comprehend for me so I had to look at other sources to understand this concept of how differences makes something that is not really there (a ghost of what something is) and that it has no essence visible and what allowed me to understand this difficult concept was a simple example/metaphor and at the same time reminded me of my childhood. In the book an intro to lit. Theory they compared this concept of diffarance to the flip books that most of us made as children, and the explanation was that only the slight differences in drawing is what made us see the illusion of movement. What we saw had really no essence the only thing that allowed of to visualize this was the difference in the drawings. And with this metaphor I was able to better comprehend what Derrida was trying to say of course this is only one of the manny aspects he talks about. But for me it was one of the hardest to comprehend.

I’m not sure of many things when it comes to this week’s readings, but I am indubitably sure of one thing:

I love Barbara Johnson.

I love her because after struggling through 62 pages of Derrida, it was like coming home to a glass of warm milk and a Snuggie to have Barbara pat you kindly on the shoulder and say, “Here: in case you didn’t get it, this is what you just read.”  I love her because she brings in the ideas of Saussure and Barthes in addition to Derrida – her piece put things in context, and felt like a very comprehensive, understandable compilation of theories about writing.  But most of all, I love her because she provided a missing link between the Derrida readings and the Lyotard and Baudrillard readings that I would have otherwise missed.  At the end of her essay, she highlights that it’s reading, not just writing, that gives us the ability to translate differance, traces, and other semiological terms into the “politics of language,” to eventually begin to question the roles of things like power and authority in society.

Both of the following readings then address power and rhetoric.  Lyotard focuses on the way power is “legitimized,” – through the definition and manipulation of “reality.”  Baudrillard, in turn, argues that reality is constantly being replaced, that new “signs” are developed as images that attempt to alter and replace what is real with what is not real.

Therein lies the one question I’ve wrestled with that Johnson, unfortunately, did not answer for me.  What is reality?  Does reality actually exist?  Baudrillard would say no, since he suggests the following:

“The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models – and with this it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times.  It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance.  It is nothing more than operational.  In fact, since it is no longer envelopped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all.” (Rivkin and Ryan 366).

This sounds a lot like Derrida’s line of logic to me – if there’s no true opposite of reality, then on principle, reality cannot exist, right?  There is no differance, and as such, reality ceases to be.  What, then, is this web of connecting “images” that are left in its wake?  We are cognizant beings, and there is a world that exists – I can see it, I can feel it.  There must be something “real” about the world.

That being said, our perception of the world around us is ever-changing.  Derrida cites this beautiful quote from Rousseau: “We are born and die every moment of our life” (Ibid 326).  Is it possible, then, that because we’re forever moving forward, away from the present, that the same could be true of reality? Maybe it’s not that reality isn’t ‘real,’ it’s just that – much like our constant inability to grasp the present – reality is simply something we cannot grasp because it’s always evolving.

Barbara didn’t answer this one for me, but I’d love to see us explore more of what the other authors have to say about this in class today.

What puzzled me in the presentation of the deconstruction was the often improper use of terms. The text defines the Post-Structuralism as a theory that “ departed so radically from the core assumptions of Structuralism.” That is true but if fails to tell us in which way. Things became more complicated for me when I realized I hardly can translate all these invented terms in Derrida’s theory and then in Heidegger’s philosophy. So what I had to do a lot of dictionary reading. So here are a few thoughts on what I understand is deconstruction. If the Structuralism works with binary oppositions, the Post- Structuralism operates with differences. At a first glance this does not seem such a radically different point of view. We have to keep in mind though that Structuralism exists inside the language only. Any opposition is something that always traces back to language. The Saussurian a non a approach is arguable only through its rapport to other language binaries. What makes the enormous step forward in the Post- Structuralist theory is the heideggerian late assumptions on language in Time and Being and also in Identity and Difference. This rapport a non a seems to be inexistent in Heidegger’s late thinking. For him what is different is what derives from a vertical actualization. Derrida’s differance would be, I think, in heideggerian terms the Being or precisely that concept that remains alway un- actualised or in other words the non-textual source of a text. Or this is exactly that something that can never be deconstructed. This non-textual source is what produces text. So the critique deconstruction brings upon Structuralism is the very origin of originality. How can we produce new texts, new ideas? Originality can not be produce still within language. It needs to originate in something different than itself, or in Humboldt terminology, this would be what generates difference. For Heidegger that is the Being, for Wittgenstein is Silence and for Derrida seems to be that something that can not be exposed. In that respect I really liked his graphic argumentation on the opposition difference/differance. So I assume the equivalent of Being or Silence, would be here differance : “ Already we have note tat differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on) [...] It belongs to no category of being present or absent.” ( p. 282) But Derrida states very clearly that his differance is not onto- theological, it only somehow follows the same pattern of reasoning.

What puzzled me in the presentation of the deconstruction was the often improper use of terms. The text defines the Post-Structuralism as a theory that “ departed so radically from the core assumptions of Structuralism.” That is true but if fails to tell us in which way. Things became more complicated for me when I realized I hardly can translate all these invented terms in Derrida’s theory and then in Heidegger’s philosophy. So what I had to do a lot of dictionary reading. So here are a few thoughts on what I understand is deconstruction. If the Structuralism works with binary oppositions, the Post- Structuralism operates with differences. At a first glance this does not seem such a radically different point of view. We have to keep in mind though that Structuralism exists inside the language only. Any opposition is something that always traces back to language. The Saussurian a non a approach is arguable only through its rapport to other language binaries. What makes the enormous step forward in the Post- Structuralist theory is the heideggerian late assumptions on language in Time and Being and also in Identity and Difference. This rapport a non a seems to be inexistent in Heidegger’s late thinking. For him what is different is what derives from a vertical actualization. Derrida’s differance would be, I think, in heideggerian terms the Being or precisely that concept that remains alway un- actualised or in other words the non-textual source of a text. Or this is exactly that something that can never be deconstructed. This non-textual source is what produces text. So the critique deconstruction brings upon Structuralism is the very origin of originality. How can we produce new texts, new ideas? Originality can not be produce still within language. It needs to originate in something different than itself, or in Humboldt terminology, this would be what generates difference. For Heidegger that is the Being, for Wittgenstein is Silence and for Derrida seems to be that something that can not be exposed. In that respect I really liked his graphic argumentation on the opposition difference/differance. So I assume the equivalent of Being or Silence, would be here differance : “ Already we have note tat differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on) [...] It belongs to no category of being present or absent.” ( p. 282) But Derrida states very clearly that his differance is not onto- theological, it only somehow follows the same pattern of reasoning.

Hello, I wanted to share a link to the book Lit. Theory an introduction by Eagleton, that I found online: I hope it helps:

Click to access literary-theory_an-introduction_terry-eagleton.pdf