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Rhizome Experiment, Fall 2015

Rhizome

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Power Our group's node is power. As such, power is the backbone that supports all of our pages. So how exactly does power relate to our individual projects and to our node as a whole?

Zack tackles some of the overarching theorists such as Guattari, Marx, Williams, and Boellstorff and compares and contrasts their explorations of power dynamics. He then weaves power through an exploration of the rhizome, the transversing of time and space, and an explanation of the importance of social forces.

Anna analyzes how power impacts society's structures and behaviors, whether it is through gender, race, or opportunity (described in her social power page), by creating a form of social hierarchy with an nearly untouchable elite: males, whites, or prison guards, as seen my examples. By obtaining power, people take the opportunity to the extreme, creating distinct differences that are difficult and rare to overcome.

Kevin addresses the impact that power and social power has on the machine in context. Identical machines undergo vastly different functions when implemented in disparate contexts under different power dynamics. This illustrates the fluidity of the machine, and highlights the crucial role that power has in affecting machinic and social dynamics.

Broadly, power dynamics create the difference that is explored in the various theories and real life examples put forth in our project. Like a rhizome, our individual work, node, and class scalar project grow infinitely from within. While the image below is a rough map of the connections we made in our group, links, tags and paths sprout up and out from our pages and weave through our node and our classmates' work. It would be pointless to map out this growth because it is intended to be traveled in an infinite amount of ways.

Now compare the image above to the image below of a Rhizome. Matrices such as the one below exist externally in our broad layout and internally within each page. Most broadly, this matrix exists throughout the entire class project. These three layers of matrices lie on top of each other and connect to each other to form an infinite number of paths.

A snapshot does not do full justice to the malleability and free flowing nature of this project. However, it is useful in giving a rough image of the concept of layering discussed above. It would be much like taking a picture of the bird murmuration. An instant before and an instant after the picture is taken, the murmuration will look entirely different. Similarly, the snapshot below is how the project looked at one instant, but does not accurately reflect the project in its entirety. As indicated, the paths and links that proliferate from Power are extensive and infinite in their shape and reach.
Rhizome Concept
I will address the question of power more extensively later on in my essay, but I want to use it vaguely to introduce the concept of a rhizome and how it is the concept around which this essay is structured. Traditionally, an author may utilize one theorist and one real life example to display what power is and how it is held by different actors. For example, In Anna's page on social power, she uses Philip Zimbardo's work called the Stanford Prison Experiment to show that when people are given the environment to take power, naturally they are going to take it and abuse it. While this approach is highly effective in displaying one manifestation of power, it doesn’t nearly encompass the question in its entirety. Using a rhizomorphic approach allows us to lift the limitations normally assigned to questions such as this. In its philosophical usage, a rhizome is, "composed of plateaus [...] Each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau"(Deleuze and Guattari 22). While there are building blocks that are assembled to create a rhizome, there is no official start and end. Deleuze says that, "to be rhizomorphous is to produce stems and filaments that seem to be roots, or better yet connect with them by penetrating the trunk, but put them to strange new uses" (15). For our purposes, "the stems and filaments" are the theorists and examples that I will propose in answering the central questions. They are not "roots", which are more singular and static. Rather, stems and filaments of rhizomes represent a certain level of "multiplicity" that Deleuze describes as "very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status" (7). The same "multiplicity" of ideologies and social forces are present at the intersection points where these central questions are asked. Now that the image of the rhizome has been introduced as the structure through which this papers constructed, we will begin to scratch the surface of the various paths that proliferate from the questions at hand.
As portrayed in the image, power branches out in many ways, with no overriding direction or predestined path.