After an almost year long sabbatical from blogging and social networking I found myself back in the fold. What brought me back? Deleuze and Guattari of course. My written work has inspired me to take up the question of literary systems in the 21st century. As natural consequence I came (back) to the writings of D+G. It was probably the first chapter of Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature that reminded me that I needed to blog again:
This work is a rhizome, a burrow. THe castle has multiple entrances whose rules of usage and whole locations aren’t very well known…We will enter, then, by any point whatsoever; none matters more than another, and no entrance is more privileged even if it seems an impasse, a tight passage, a siphon…Only the principle of multiple entrances prevents the introduction of the enemy, the Signifier and those attempts to interpret a work that is actually only open to experimentation.
Let me offer one meaning from the hundreds that this passage suggests: There is no beginning, there can be no introduction. One finds oneself immersed into a great web of meaning and slowly, carefully one begins to orient, arrange and understand their surroundings. But the knowledge of that surrounding is always mitigated by the nature of their location in a space that is always subject to change. The blind-spot that their “objectivity” necessitates makes understanding impossible, yet meaning persists out of the meaninglessness.
This is the metaphor for all systems in the 21st century, this blog notwithstanding. In previous iterations I may have suggested constraint for this medium, trying to contain and direct its expansion. Like any second-order cybernetic system the contraints become arbitrary markers, defined by their inability to contain.
This blog is a blog. Forget tautology. Lets begin.
