Welcome to my rhizomatic/neural journal!
Welcome to my GLS blog. This is starting as a journal project for LS801 The Capacity and Limits of Reason in the Spring 2008 semester, but will hopefully extend throughout my progress through the program. It is meant to become a resource and record of my thought processes and others’ comments upon them.
This is a mutable project. I spent a good deal of time considering the form this journal should take and settled for the time being on the blog. This may become a separate full blown web site with other resources at some time. I didn’t want to work on a simple linear paper type journal. It doesn’t seem to suit how I think and, maybe more importantly, how I organize my thoughts. I’ve been inspired to some degree by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the rhizome because of their model’s resemblance to my note-taking procedures! Similarly, a neural model of dendrites, axons and synapses is very compelling and somewhat resembles my very non-linear notes.
The blog post page will contain my semi-regular thoughts, impressions and vague intuitions as I read through particular books and experience various things. As more cogent ideas develop a rhizomatic nucleus will form on a separate page with subsequent links to other local and distant pages, images, sounds, music, videos etc etc etc. Broken root systems will be left on display and new nuclei will be added with connections established on an ongoing basis as the need seems apparent to me. I welcome any considered commentary!
February 17, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Leaha wonders how one takes a non-linear human mind that always seems to be multi-tracking all the inputs, and siphon it into some something so constrained as the written word? It’s seems like asking a persona to give up one the their senses… sight or sound. But perhaps it will sharpen the other?
February 19, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Thanks for checking out my GLS blog Leaha! Much appreciated.
I don’t really see an issue or a contradiction of any sort here Leaha. Text and language are another track in the multi-track of life! I certainly hope you don’t think I’ll be giving up non-discursive forms of inquiry any time soon, or ever. Besides, I like to make use of all the tools available to me to explore the world. Language and text are very well suited to the ‘conceptual-propositional’ mode of thought Something that music and visual arts don’t seem particularly well suited for, ‘conceptual art’ (nasty stuff!) notwithstanding.
Besides, I specifically chose a non-linear format (web) to pursue this journal project so that I can bring in visual and sonic elements as well. Tricky on paper. The course I’m currently doing is very textually oriented though, so you’ll see lots of writing on my part at this juncture. Part of why I applied to this program was to pursue my writing more seriously and in depth so here’s the start. Hope you’ll still hop in to read every once in a while!