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"Seen
from the viewpoint of textual theory, hypertext systems appear as
the practical implementation of a conceptual movement that ... rejects
authoritarian, "logocentric" hierarchies of language, whose
modes of operation are linear and deductive, and seeks instead systems
of discourse that admit a plurality of meanings where the operative
modes are hypothesis and interpretive play."
–
Stuart Moulthrop
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"Multiplicities
are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomultipicities
for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the
object, or to divide in the subject."
–
Deleuze and Guattari
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The
Net has undermined the infrastructure of commerce, politics, the
arts, etc. The underground band, the grassroots politician, the
Net artist can disseminate a message with extraordinary versatility
without relying on traditional modes of institutional support. Will
new economic structures, political systems, art forms emerge from
this change?
Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, from their essay on the rhizome in "A
Thousand Plateaus,"
suggest new paradigms rooted in the branching multiplicity of postmodern
society.
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"In
contrast to centered (even polycentric) systems with hierarchical
modes of communication and pre-established paths, the rhizome is
an acentered, non-hierarchical, non-signifying system without a
General and without an organizing memory or central automation,
defined solely by a circulation of states."
–
Deleuze and Guattari
The
rhizomatic structure has infinitely possible interconnections, a
living, dynamic indeterminancy of invention; endless,
beginningless, boundless.
Telematics
are generating amorphous topographies, points connected by lines
without centrality and without authorial control.
The
Network is a labyrinthine rhizome, multi-cursural pathway that is
dissolving hierarchies, ignoring anachronistic power structures,
soil for germinating collective, distributed
agency.
"A
rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections
between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances
relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles."
--
Deleuze and Guattari
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"To
these centered systems, the authors contracts a centered system,
finite networks of automata in which communication runs from any
neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and
all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their state
a a given moment – such that the local operations are coordinated
and the final, global result synchronized without a central agency."
–
Deleuze and Guattari
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"In
contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe
in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of
times, in a growing dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel
times. This network of times which approached one another, forked,
broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces
all possibilities of time."
–
Jorge Luis Borges
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"The
map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions, it is detachable,
reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn,
reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual,
group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived
of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation.
Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome
is that it always has multiple entryways."
–
Deleuze and Guattari
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