INKE's Modelling and Prototyping As Nomad Thought After having talked about the rhizome and its relationship

to the act of scholarship in my last blog post, I wish to move on to what I think are the consequences of using it are; or, in other words, the shift in thinking that I would argue the rhizome engenders. To briefly re articulate, in the age of digital scholarship I would argue the body of scholarship has become a rhizome. !ith so many te"ts unified, they all can connect with one another at every point. #isually, $eleuze and %uattari argue it is akin to a giant mass of roots in which you cannot tell where everything originates from and terminates. Instead it is &ust a giant unified mess. 'artographies emerge in the act of navigating through the rhizome; which paths do you chose to travel( There are countless possibilities, and that is the consequence of the rhizome. )o what then is it we are doing e"actly if we are engaging with the rhizome( To engage with the rhizome is to engage in what is termed *nomadic thought,+ but to understand what is meant by this term one must first understand both *state philosophy+ and the spatialized thinking of $eleuze and %uattari. ,rian -assumi argues that state philosophy is *another name for the representational thinking that has dominated !estern metaphysics since .lato+ and is *grounded in a double identity/ of the thinking sub&ect, and of the concepts it creates and to which it lends its own presumed attributes of sameness and constancy+0-assumi 12. In other words, state philosophy is the traditional way of thinking, which is sub&ect to criticism for rendering the sub&ect homogenous with the state. Traditionally, philosophers have been employees of the state. )tarting with the foundation of the 3niversity of ,erlin 4 a state owned university 4 philosophers have been tasked with the moral and spiritual education of its citizens, and this renders *each mind an analogously organized mini )tate morally unified in the supermind of the )tate+0-assumi 12. In other words, traditional philosophy renders the sub&ect subservient to the state in his way of thinking. Traditional scholastic criticism 4 which some of I5678s -odelling and .rototyping 0-9.2 pro&ects are trying to move away from 4 is not entirely like $eleuze and %uattari8s state philosophy; scholars and critics are not attempting to bring us under the tutelage of the unified )tate 0in fact, scholarship is currently globalized through the availability and interactions between works across the globe, so it is quite a statist2. :owever, it does represent the closed way of thinking of )tate .hilosophy; scholars must adhere to the narrative format of &ournals and monographs, and in this sense might be sub&ect to the criticisms of forcing sameness and consistency upon criticism. !e might say it is subservient to the state, but not the state as understood as the nation state. ;ather, we might think of the state in this sense as being the scholarly apparatus that puts primacy on this traditional scholarship and places awards such as tenure on adhering to it. ,ut what is more important to me in terms of what the -9. pro&ects are doing is the notion of spatialized thinking that accompanies the binary of state philosophy and nomad thought. -assumi argues that *state space is *striated,+ or gridded+ with movement being *confined <...= by gravity to a horizontal plane, and limited by the order of that plane to preset paths between fi"ed and identifiable points 0-assumi >2. The notion of striated space parallels that of the arborescent schema; the movements one can make are predetermined and the sub&ect is not free to make any movement he wishes bringing, at the very least, a tinge of domination or control. If we think about scholarship using the arborescent schema, scholarship is being dominated. This is contrasted to nomad space, which is *smooth, or open ended+ and in which *one can rise up at any point and move to any other+ 0-assumi >2; in other words, the rhizome. Therefore, in so far that we use the rhizomatic model in thinking about scholarship, we are engaging in nomad space, and nomad thought. And now it is possible to e"plain what nomad thought is. To some e"tent it is already clear; it is thinking through the rhizome and moving freely in the space of thought. !hereas movement is restricted in the gridded space of state thinking, the nomad is completely unrestricted in his movement across space 0which is in this case thinking and engaging in scholarship2. ?or this reason, it is a way of thinking built on difference 0in the $eleuzian sense of being unique from that which surrounds the

sub&ect2. In this regard, *the concepts <nomad thought= creates do not merely reflect the eternal form of a legislating sub&ect, but are defined by a communicable force in relation to which their sub&ect, to the e"tent that they can be said to have one, is only secondary+ 0-assumi 12. The parallels between this and the type of thinking I567 engenders are strong. The legislating sub&ect of scholarship would be the scholar, and thus nomad thought seeks to 4 instead of creating a model that relates the argument back to himself 4 create a type of scholarship in which what is created is in communication with other scholars and scholastic pieces around it. This is a huge part of what I see I567 doing. .ro&ects like 5ew;adial attempt to make linkages across mediums and te"ts, and can be seen as nomad concepts. ?urthermore, the game based pro&ect being developed at the 3niversity of )askatchewan goes even further with this concept of communication contra the sub&ect by having a model built on the very idea of communication and interaction between users. These tools are not, in so far that they are indicative of nomadic thought, the *end all be all+ which will replace the narrative based model that dominates now. If any model were to be imposed over the entirety of criticism in the state like manner I elude to, then it is &ust as flawed as the model I argue -9. is criticizing. ;ather, they allow for a scholar to think outside of the paradigms of the status quo, and thus engage in new and fresh ways of thinking and approaching the world. Bibliography -assumi, ,rian. A Users Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. 'ambridge, -ass./ -IT .ress, @AAB. .rint.