2003-06-07

D&G- Design issues of a book-as-rhizome


[on plateaus: "a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose
devlopment avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end."
"A rhizome is made of plateaus."]

For example, a book composed of chapters has culmination and termination
points. What takes place in a book composed instead of plateaus that
communicate with one another across microfissures, as in a brain? We call a
"plateau" any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial
undergroup stems in such a was as to form or extend a rhizome. We are writing
this book as a rhizome. It is composed of plateaus. We have given it a circular
form, but only for laughs. Each morning we would wake up, and each of us would
ask himself what plateau he was going to tackle, writing five lines here, ten
there. We had hallucinatory experiences, we watched lines leave one plateau and
proceed to another like columns of tiny ants. We made circles of convergence.
Each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other
plateau. To attian the multiple, one must have a method that effectively
constructs it; no typographical cleverness, no lexical agility, no blending or
creation of words, no syntactical boldness, can substitute for it. In fact,
these are more often than not merely mimetic procedures used to disseminate or
disperse a unity that is retained in a different dimension for an image-book.
Technonarcissism. Typographical, lexical, or syntactic creations are necessary
only when they no longer belong to the form of expression of a hidden unity,
becoming themselves dimensions of the multiplicity under consideration; we only
know of rare successes in this.

[So the design is for the words to be true to themselves. To be the climax
state, and nothing more. No ornament, no relying on that sort of stuff. It's a
design goal I agree with.]