Been reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Introduction: Rhizome lately. If one is studying digital discourse, then one must read it. Them’s the rules. So I did, and now I’m thinking. Maybe I’ll manage to find enough time to blog it in the next couple of days. But right now, I want to foist the introductory paragraph of that essay upon my non-theory readers, the ones who think this stuff isn’t any fun at all. Reading this is like being a fly on the wall, watching a couple of guys tossing words back and forth and generally enjoying themselves. (And since I’ve been knee-deep in collaborative theory lately, it adds a nice levity to that train of thought as well.)

“The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it’s nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it’s only a manner of speaking. 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. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.”

Here are some D&G links, most, if not all, of which are via Wood s Lot. (Does anyone else around here feel that Woods reads their minds, or at least anticipates their every need? That aside, the man just runs a damn fine blog.)

Rhizome@Internet: Using the Internet as an Example of Deleuze and Guattari's "Rhizome"
Deleuze & Guattari Online Resources
Rhizome: About Deleuze & Guattari and Their Trees and Rhizomes