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 found the excerpt of Derrida’s essay, Differance, fascinating; not only for the level of complexity (I had to read it 3 times and I’m still struggling), but for the subversive ideas of reversing hierarchies that are entrenched in the history of thought within the metaphysical tradition.

His attempt of de-centering violent hierarchical binary oppositions, and his critique of the privilege given to one variable over another, such as presence/absence, good/evil, speech/writing, etc.  Specifically in this latter relation, Derrida demonstrates that contrary to the traditional approach of considering speech pure, more immediate to thought than writing as this latter as an obstruction to the process of portraying it, writing is a species of speech (Selden, Widdowson and Broker, 168). Both, speech and writing share the same structure of signifiers not always connected with signifieds, and are permeated by differance.

I wonder if the new opposition between metaphysics and deconstruction in the way we understand the world represents another hierarchical opposition that Derrida precisely tried to avoid.

I also found Johnson’s proposal of reading the silence very interesting (Rivkin and Ryan, 346-347) as an alternative to the usual way of reading texts. How we do that when we have social structures internalized (Foucault) that might prevent us from seeing the absence? Are there ways to escape, perhaps, looking at Lyotard and his skepticism toward the meta-narratives or Barthes with his idea of text that generates and subverts meaning? but again how to escape from fixed structures that shape our thought and enable ourselves to go beyond these limits?

This week’s readings brought me to the other equally complex and contested side of the spectrum: the reader and the meanings created from a text. Barthes’ call for the birth of the reader at expenses of the death of the author (p.148) and Foucault’s reflection on how the society insists on perpetuating the ideological construction of the author despite the efforts of modern criticism and philosophy, reminded me a discussion about Jorge Luis Borges, short story Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote where the main character re-writes this work and the text is seen as a completely different text. This to say, echoing Barthes again, that the text is eternally written here and now, or Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality when stating that a text is a mosaic of quotations, or the transformation of other texts. Borges uses a narrator that praises Menard’s innovative style of the “rudimentary art of the work (of art)”, hinting that a new reading of a text is, in fact, like re-writing the text.

This only generates more questions as writer and reader are two sides of the same coin, the text. Who is the reader? An abstract concept as Barthes implied: “someone without history, biography, psychology” (p.148) as a recipient that brings text to life through their interpretation? or the product of embodied social structures that cannot see beyond these systems of classifications where they are located and in which they locate/undersdant texts? Is the author’s own structures being reflected on his work and being used to reproduce social order? How can we break this trap? Can we break it?

As I was reading the formalists and their scientific approach to the object of study, such as the importance given to the literary devices and procedures that make literature an autonomous field, a question came to mind regarding the affective fallacy. If the reactions of readers are irrelevant as the structure is the ultimate recipient of meaning, why Shklovsky emphasizes the ultimate goal of poetry to “disrupt habitual ways of seeing and thinking”. Isn’t the goal of creating a special perception of the object the same thing as making sure that there are reactions to that particular work of art? Moreover, having this goal will mean the author has that intention and this is precisely another fallacy that I think formalists are denouncing.

Is this a contradiction or am I not understanding the readings?

Hi everyone! My name is Liliana Patricia Castaneda Lopez, and I am very exciting (and a bit scared) about this class, I have to confess.

I hold a B.A. in Communications and Journalism from Colombia, and have pursued graduate studies in Pol. Science and Latin American Studies in both Colombia and Canada. My current academic interest is in memory and reconciliation through literature in countries affected by civil wars. I would like to apply for a Ph.D. program in Hispanic Literature in the near future.

Rather than talking about my expectations, which some of you have brilliantly exposed in your postings, I would like to reflect on my fears regarding this class as theory can be an enticing trap too difficult to escape from. I remember I took an intensive course on semiotics several years ago during my major, and I became obsessed with trying to find the meaning behind everything I perceived. Now, reading about the formalists and structuralists brought me back to that time as I tried to look for symbols everywhere and tried to unveil an author’s intention or meaning. Surprisingly, sometimes I realized such intention does not exist or is misinterpreted.

Although for the Formalists motivation seems to go to a second place compared to the procedure and the devices that make literature something autonomous, there seems to be an obsession of overly using a method to explain everything while diminishing other variables.