The rhizome, the net and the book

Empedocles European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 8 (2):151-165 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari launched the concept of rhizome as a critical alternative to the ‘root-book’. However, the environment in which we now cultivate our reading habits is not the printed book, but the rhizomatics of the World Wide Web, which according to some leads to distracted ways of reading. Due to the plasticity of the brain, new habits of shared attention make it physiologically more difficult for us to do a deep reading of books. Are Deleuze and Guattari, who simply wanted to open the way to more experimentation, victims of the irony of history? Has the concept of rhizome finished its task? The article discusses the tortured relationship between the rhizome as a philosophical concept and its success as a way to describe the Internet. The Internet, however, only conforms to what they called the ‘canal-rhizome’: the rhizome in its despotic form. Herein lies the concept’s continued relevance.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Reality of “Machines,” Notes on the Rhizome-Thinking of Deleuze and Guattari.Christa Bürger - 1985 - Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1985 (64):33-44.
On the Line.John Johnston (ed.) - 1983 - Semiotext(E).
Repeating the Rhizome.Alice van der Klei - 2002 - Substance 31 (1):48.
Repeating the rhizome.Alice van der Klei - 2002 - Substance 31 (1):48-55.
Keanu Rhizome.Jeffrey Karnicky - 1998 - Symploke 6 (1):135-144.
The Reality of "Machines," Notes on the Rhizome-Thinking of Deleuze and Guattari.C. Burger - 1985 - Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1985 (64):33-44.
Scoring the Rhizome: Bussotti's Musical Diagram.Ronald Bogue - 2014 - Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 8 (4):470-490.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-12-04

Downloads
29 (#474,441)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references