Week 13

Postmodern Subjectivity

• Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. “A Thousand Plateaus.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004. 378-86.

A book

= an assemblage= a multiplicity= a body without organs= a machine= desire≠ ideology

http://tn3-2.deviantart.com/fs6/300W/i/2005/113/f/e/The_Solipsist_by_Body_Without_Organs.png

The first type: the root-book

• = the classical book• = mimesis “The book imitates the

world, the world imitates nature” (379).

• = subjective organic interiority• = binaries, “the One that becomes

two”

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm

The second type: the radicle-system• The fascicular root• A book all the more total for being

fragmented• The principal root has aborted, its tip has

been destroyed; an immediate indefinite multiplicity of secondary roots grafts onto it and undergoes a flourishing development. . . . but the root’s unity subsists . . . demanding an even more comprehensive secret unity, or a more extensive totality . . . . (379-80)

• Nietzsche, James Joyce

http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/rp/growthstages/image56.jpg

http://www.puc.edu/Faculty/Gilbert_Muth/art0001.jpg

The third type: a rhizome• =subterranean stem• Characteristics

–1. connection–2. heterogeneity–3. multiplicity–4. asignifying rupture

http://www.nomadology.com/rhizome.html

http://www.bartleby.com/images/A4images/A4rhizom.jpg

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/c/c2/240px-Ginger.jpg

http://www.yourdictionary.com/images/ahd/jpg/A4burrow.jpg

• Contrary to “a deeply rooted belief, the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with the world . . . . (383)

• Example: the Pink Panther

A plateau• A plateau is always in the middle, not at t

he beginning or the end.• A rhizome is made of plateaus.• A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is a

lways in the middle, between things . . . . The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb “to be,” but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and . . . and . . . and . . .” (385-86).

http://www.toon-en-rikkemien.nl/Waterberg%20Plateau%20Park.JPG

•Discussion

Francis Bacon - Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X – 1953 http://www.artquotes.net/masters/bacon/paint_study.htm

Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bacon/selfport.jpg

•The End