ATP Reading Group: 'Rhizome' Guiding Questions (Patreon)

My guess is that everyone is coming into the reading group with varying levels of experience with respect to reading Deleuze and Guattari. For that reason, I thought I would create a few questions that might help folks pull something from the reading if they are struggling. Also, it gives you a sense of what is on my mind as I go through the text this time.    

There's A LOT happening in this plateau to the extent that we could spend the whole session on the first few pages. If you are quietly struggling with the reading, my general suggestion is to find something that stands out to you: what forced you to think about something differently? Maybe write a couple sentences about that moment in the text and bring it along to the reading.  

Another strategy is to pick a sentence or group of sentences which you don't understand or which really bother you. Google search them, get a preliminary discussion going with yourself or someone else about why it is hard to digest.  Perhaps one way we'll approach the session this time is by asking some folks to share either of those meditations.  

Anyway, here are some things that I am thinking about:  

1. The first paragraph of the plateau announces a series of strategies, namely to become imperceptible and to avoid recognition. Yet this is encouraged not as an act of erasure but one of blending and multiplying. How does these implications extend to the creation of a book, a work of art, a piece of music, or a political movement?

2. There are lots of conceptual terms to deal with right off the bat. This time I'm focusing on (thanks to a good friend of ours) the difference between 'destratification' and 'deterritorialization'. Perhaps an easier question is to understand what they mean by 'stratum/strata' and 'territory'.    

3. How would you describe the wasp and orchid example to someone without using words like imitate, mimicry, image, etc.--in other words, 'signifying' words?

4. They say that "writing has nothing to do with signifying". Rather, it's about mapping, surveying, and the cartography of new domains.  How could a work of philosophy do that? 

 Looking forward to seeing everyone!

Craig