http://www.newmuseum.org/

I don't quite know what the "New Museum" is, but it makes a reference to rhizomes on the front page, so I figured it most be postmodern. Its a new building in New York and I was just wondering if anyone else had heard anything about it.

If D&G are affirming the rhizome over the root-tree, which, by the end of the intro to Thousand Plateaus it seems they are, I wonder if this is as subversive as they make it out to be. At times it sounds like 'stick it to power, become rhizome, don't let yourself get hierarchized.' Yet, apropos of the 'is the internet a rhizome?' thread, it seems to me everything is becoming rhizome anyway -- the internet, corporate organization, military organization, guerilla advertising, etc.

I'm having trouble figuring out how much of D&G's rhizome v. arborescence, map v. tracing distinction is simply an ontological description and how much is a an affirmation of the rhizome over arborescence, mapping over tracing.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of plateaus (From "Introduction: Rhizome"), and specifically about how we can grasp them in our minds that so very much latch onto structure (like you, Bumpkins, I feel need structure in my life in most things, and am quite lost without it, so the idea of plateaus is both tantalizing and infuriating at the same time). The way D&G write is in plateaus, as they claim, "each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau." (22) What a brilliant, non-linear way to write . . .

Forgive me if this is offensively self-indulgent, but earlier this semester I fashioned a "thesis rhizome" to map out the conceptual network of my thesis work, and I wanted to share it with you all:
http://claremont.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31843598&id=13307083

Hooray for the rhizome! While I cannot exactly claim I understood Deleuze and Guattari's (D&G) referent in "Introduction: Rhizome" (was it language, was it The Book, was it grasses and plants??) I did thoroughly enjoy the idea of the rhizome. I read it as a very empowering, grassroots idea for how to begin to tackle the problems we are so entrenched in today, and specifically the very relevant issues of media consolidation currently being discussed by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).