I was watching a wonderful slideshare by Jurgen Appelo called Complexity versus Lean, when I came across one of those pithy quotes that pulls ideas together for you. On slide 74 of 92, Appelo says, "All models are wrong, some are useful." I liked the quote so much I googled it and discovered that, according to Anecdote.com, George Box, the industrial statistician, is credited with the quote ‘all models are wrong, some are useful’. I will leave it for another day to figure out what Box and Appelo mean by the quote, but I know what it means for me today.
Just yesterday, I left a comment on Joanne's post Rhizomes and Canons - Week 3 - CCK12, in which she says YES to many Connectivist principles that she's learning in CCK12, but NO to the idea that there is not "some knowledge that is settled and unassailable." She particularly wants to reserve a special place—perhaps a sacred space—for her own knowledge of God and human love. I have great sympathy for her point of view, being a believer myself, and yet I think she is confusing knowledge of the thing with the thing itself. This is not uncommon. It's what most of us do most of the time, and usually, it gets us through the day quite nicely.
But this quote—All models are wrong, some are useful—puts this habit of mind in perspective for me: all our models of God are wrong, some are useful. Likewise, our models of reality are wrong, some are useful. This, I think, is a core principle of rhizomatic/connectivist thinking. Reality does not sit still for our models. While we must create models of reality to attain some kind of sanity, the models are at best useful for a time. Eventually, all our models slip into an intolerable inconsistency with the reality they once mapped, and they cease to be useful—or worse, they become harmful and dangerous.
This is why Deleuze and Guattari insist that one of the core principles of the rhizome is cartography, or mapping. We must be in a constant process of mapping reality, especially that reality that we think we've already nailed down. Reality slips, and our models no longer map to it. We must build models and constantly rebuild our models. Models such as Connectivism, then, are wrong, though I and others find it useful for a time—perhaps a life time. I'm satisfied with that, but also vigilant. We are in most danger not when we think we know, but when we think that our knowledge is permanent, settled and unassailable. Nothing stops learning as quickly as settled and unassailable knowledge.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Chasing Metaphors in CCK12
In a recent post entitled Week 3: Rhizomatic or biological neuralogical network?, my colleague in CCK12 Matt Bury writes that he's "been pondering the analogy of distributed networks of learners, i.e. Connectivism, as rhizomes" and concludes that he "wasn’t convinced by it from the start." You can read the rest of Matt's thoughtful comments on his blog, but if I understand him correctly, he doesn't see a tight fit between botanical rhizomes and networks of people. Actually, he seems to prefer neurological networks, which appear to be structured much more like social learning networks. I, too, have found neural networks to be most helpful in understanding networks in general and neural networks in particular, and I heartily refer interested scholars to Olaf Sporns' book Networks of the Brain.
Matt makes a fair point that others have made: the Deleusian rhizome doesn't match so well with botanical rhizomes which don't match so well with social networks. I see Matt's point, and I think it has some substance, but for me, it is somewhat beside the point for several reasons. First, Deleuze and Guattari use the rhizome mostly as a metaphor, or so it seems to me, and I don't think metaphors can be pushed to any great precision. Rather, a metaphor compares a more tangible thing to another less tangible thing to illuminate some aspect of the second thing, or sometimes both things. Love is a rose is a metaphor that suggests certain features of love that we might not have thought about before; however, if we press the metaphor too closely, we can quickly discover features of love that are not like a rose and vice versa. Metaphors shift our point of view so that we look at an object differently than has been customary. It doesn't map to the second thing precisely.
Then Deleuze and Guattari do not rely so much on any botanical definition of rhizomes; rather, they describe the rhizome as a linguistic and social structure mostly, providing a definition of sorts based on six features: connectivity, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying ruptures, cartography, and decalcomania. I'm no botanist, but I don't think these features are prominent in any definition of botanical rhizomes. For example, Deleuzian rhizomes are heterogenous. Most botanical rhizomes are homogenous. Rather, these features describe much more closely the way language develops and spreads, and Deleuze and Guattari use them that way.
I have found Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome to be a particularly potent metaphor that has given me a new way of thinking about social networks and a new vocabulary to use in discussing those networks. The metaphor may not work for everyone, however. Love is a rose no longer works very well for most people, though at one time, it was quite the fresh and striking image.
I'm not sure why Deleuze and Guattari chose the rhizome upon which to construct their analysis. I think it was the visual features that appealed to them, but that's just conjecture. Or perhaps they wanted another botanical image to contrast with the tree image that they were using to describe hierarchical structures (another metaphor, and again, not so precise as some trees such as aspens could be classified as botanical rhizomes—a detail Deleuze and Guattari ignore or are unaware of). Anyway, I think the point I've been wandering toward is this: when we speak of the Deleuzian rhizome, or rhizomatics, we are not speaking of a botanical rhizome, but of a metaphor for that undifferentiated ground of being out of which structures emerge and into which all structures eventually return. To scale that down to something more practical, we are talking about how we humans are constantly trying to map a shifting landscape—to capture in language, mathematics, and social, political, religious, and economic structures those details of reality that for a time seem important, but which always shift away from our names and structures into something else. If that is how the complex world works, then how do we educate for that? That's rhizomatic learning.
Matt makes a fair point that others have made: the Deleusian rhizome doesn't match so well with botanical rhizomes which don't match so well with social networks. I see Matt's point, and I think it has some substance, but for me, it is somewhat beside the point for several reasons. First, Deleuze and Guattari use the rhizome mostly as a metaphor, or so it seems to me, and I don't think metaphors can be pushed to any great precision. Rather, a metaphor compares a more tangible thing to another less tangible thing to illuminate some aspect of the second thing, or sometimes both things. Love is a rose is a metaphor that suggests certain features of love that we might not have thought about before; however, if we press the metaphor too closely, we can quickly discover features of love that are not like a rose and vice versa. Metaphors shift our point of view so that we look at an object differently than has been customary. It doesn't map to the second thing precisely.
Then Deleuze and Guattari do not rely so much on any botanical definition of rhizomes; rather, they describe the rhizome as a linguistic and social structure mostly, providing a definition of sorts based on six features: connectivity, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying ruptures, cartography, and decalcomania. I'm no botanist, but I don't think these features are prominent in any definition of botanical rhizomes. For example, Deleuzian rhizomes are heterogenous. Most botanical rhizomes are homogenous. Rather, these features describe much more closely the way language develops and spreads, and Deleuze and Guattari use them that way.
I have found Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome to be a particularly potent metaphor that has given me a new way of thinking about social networks and a new vocabulary to use in discussing those networks. The metaphor may not work for everyone, however. Love is a rose no longer works very well for most people, though at one time, it was quite the fresh and striking image.
I'm not sure why Deleuze and Guattari chose the rhizome upon which to construct their analysis. I think it was the visual features that appealed to them, but that's just conjecture. Or perhaps they wanted another botanical image to contrast with the tree image that they were using to describe hierarchical structures (another metaphor, and again, not so precise as some trees such as aspens could be classified as botanical rhizomes—a detail Deleuze and Guattari ignore or are unaware of). Anyway, I think the point I've been wandering toward is this: when we speak of the Deleuzian rhizome, or rhizomatics, we are not speaking of a botanical rhizome, but of a metaphor for that undifferentiated ground of being out of which structures emerge and into which all structures eventually return. To scale that down to something more practical, we are talking about how we humans are constantly trying to map a shifting landscape—to capture in language, mathematics, and social, political, religious, and economic structures those details of reality that for a time seem important, but which always shift away from our names and structures into something else. If that is how the complex world works, then how do we educate for that? That's rhizomatic learning.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Rhizomatic Growth in CCK12
In a response to my previous post, fellow CCK12 MOOCer and blogger, Matt Bury, describes a number of techniques that he uses to build communities of inquiry and practice in his classrooms, and it reminds me that formal theories—if we choose to call Connectivism a formal theory—grow in very informal, rhizomatic ways, spreading like oil—or as Deleuze and Guattari say of the rhizomatic growth of language: It evolves by subterranean stems and flows, along river valleys or train tracks; it spreads like a patch of oil. It is not proselytized as a monolithic system of thought. I think this is one of the appeals of rhizomatic thinking for me, and I suspect it may be for others as well.
The monolithic system of thought, of course, has a most useful function. For a time, sometimes for a long time, it steadies our thoughts and allows us to measure progress and change. We can define goals and even appear to meet them. Yet, if Deleuze and Guattari are correct, then this measurement and movement is always something of a fiction—a useful fiction often, but a fiction—and eventually it becomes a fascist kernel that becomes more interested in preserving its own identity and establishing its own hegemony than in being useful. Even this open-ended, freely evolving Connectivist community may eventually write its own creed and bless those who are inside that creed and castigate those who are outside.
But never fear. If Deleuze and Guattari are correct, then the rhizome will simply move on, flowing around and beyond the little fascist knots that calcify from time to time. This movement in rhizomatic structures comes most explicitly, and sometimes forcefully, through asignifying ruptures, the fourth characteristic of the rhizome.
The monolithic system of thought, of course, has a most useful function. For a time, sometimes for a long time, it steadies our thoughts and allows us to measure progress and change. We can define goals and even appear to meet them. Yet, if Deleuze and Guattari are correct, then this measurement and movement is always something of a fiction—a useful fiction often, but a fiction—and eventually it becomes a fascist kernel that becomes more interested in preserving its own identity and establishing its own hegemony than in being useful. Even this open-ended, freely evolving Connectivist community may eventually write its own creed and bless those who are inside that creed and castigate those who are outside.
But never fear. If Deleuze and Guattari are correct, then the rhizome will simply move on, flowing around and beyond the little fascist knots that calcify from time to time. This movement in rhizomatic structures comes most explicitly, and sometimes forcefully, through asignifying ruptures, the fourth characteristic of the rhizome.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
#cck12 - A Connected Classroom
I'm finding it quite easy to frame most of what I do in my writing classes with rhizomatic/connectivist thinking. I work hard to connect students to someone other than to me. I begin class by asking my students to take out their cell phones and text someone about what they are doing at the moment: learning how to write. This is a bit theatrical as most of the students think at first that I will demand that they turn off their cell phones. They are shocked but pleased to learn that this class will encourage cell phone usage. We then read the responses aloud, which almost always provides some merriment. This exercise immediately lets them know several things about the class:
- connectivity is paramount in the class.
- the class will connect beyond the confines of the classroom.
- the class will utilize whatever tool is convenient and productive for writing.
- the teacher may not be the center of the class universe.
- writing is quite likely not what they thought it was.
- we will find ways to have fun.
The ludic element should not be overlooked. Research shows that few things work better than fun and play for connecting people with each other and with a new endeavor. Rhizomatic connectivists must have a shtick and a game. By the way, one cannot read Deleuze and Guattari without being struck by the theatrical, ludic quality of their writing. If you aren't laughing through A Thousand Plateaus or Anti-Oedipus, then you're missing the point.
I then ask my students how many of them consider themselves writers. Usually, only a handful raise their hands. I then ask them how often they text each day. They all text a lot. I then insist that they are all writers, and usually, they protest that texting is not writing. This allows us to discuss writing, with me trying to convince them that their generation is generating more writing by more people than any other generation in history. I'm not sure how many of them are convinced, but it does serve them notice that they are not in a traditional college class, much less a traditional writing class. They sense that something is afoot, and by this time, most of them are alert. I like this.
I then have them introduce each other to the class, but only after they interview each other and take notes (more writing and connecting, but they don't usually think of it as writing or connecting). They have to learn the single most interesting thing they can about the other person that can be publicly shared. Both the interviews and the introductions are usually great fun, and after the introductions, I lead them in a discussion of writing as a tool for learning and for remembering. I again ask them how many make notes and lists for themselves or take notes in class. Most all of them do, so I submit that as further evidence that they are already writers. Usually by this time, many are beginning to warm to the idea. I ask how many enjoyed the interview, and most do. So I ask again if they enjoy writing. Not so many raise their hands this time.
I conclude the class by giving them my Gmail address and asking them to send me a Gmail identifying their Google account so that I can send them the link to the Google Sites class wiki, where the syllabus is housed.
So I devote the entire first day connecting the students to each other, to someone outside the class, to writing as they already use it, and finally to me and to the course apparatus, which obviously relies a great deal on Google. I find the Google tools much less restrictive and far more open to connectivity than the school's LMS.
Of course, next term I may use completely different activities, but the point will likely remain the same: foster connectivity that centers about the class proper, but encourages connectivity beyond the class.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Connectivity in the Classroom
So Deleuze and Guattari say that in the rhizome all points are connected to all other points, even unlike, heterogenous points, and that these connected points are a multiplicity emerging from multiplicities. To my mind, this undermines directly the traditional, industrial approach to education which identifies each student and teacher as a discrete unit, each class and lesson as discrete units, each educational cohort as a discrete unit, each discipline as a discrete unit, and arranges them all in some factory order, mostly to meet the demands of the factory, the school.
How would I say this for my classes? A class of 20 students brings together more points of value and knowledge than the class can ever hope to mine, utilize, incorporate, cultivate, or explore. Moreover, limiting the value-add merely to the teacher's knowledge short-changes the students' learning processes significantly. Rhizomatic/Connectivist education, then, looks for ways to form connections to all the value and knowledge resident in any given intersection of students, teachers, content, resources, interests, objectives, and so forth, and suggests that the more connections the class forms, then the more knowledge that emerges for all.
What can we connect to? Well, most everything—especially in higher education. While the class may, and probably should, have a focus similar to my focus on academic writing on the focus of CCK12 on Connectivism and connected knowledge, the rhizomatic/connectivist key is to help students and teachers connect this starting focus to their own personal and professional trajectories. In other words, what is the connection of academic writing to the student in my class who is preparing to be a cop, or a nurse, or a legal assistant? What value can the student with six-years of military service bring to the conversation about academic writing? What value from the student has survived cancer? What value from the student who has just graduated from high school?
A rhizomatic/connectivist approach to education, it seems to me, looks for a space within which students can bring their own value to the discussion of whatever, be it writing, art, or zoology. I think MOOCs are one such space, and I'm grateful to be in two of them at the moment: Change11 and CCK12, but I'm also looking for ways to open my classroom in its traditional space to this rhizomatic/connectivist approach. I need specific techniques.
How would I say this for my classes? A class of 20 students brings together more points of value and knowledge than the class can ever hope to mine, utilize, incorporate, cultivate, or explore. Moreover, limiting the value-add merely to the teacher's knowledge short-changes the students' learning processes significantly. Rhizomatic/Connectivist education, then, looks for ways to form connections to all the value and knowledge resident in any given intersection of students, teachers, content, resources, interests, objectives, and so forth, and suggests that the more connections the class forms, then the more knowledge that emerges for all.
What can we connect to? Well, most everything—especially in higher education. While the class may, and probably should, have a focus similar to my focus on academic writing on the focus of CCK12 on Connectivism and connected knowledge, the rhizomatic/connectivist key is to help students and teachers connect this starting focus to their own personal and professional trajectories. In other words, what is the connection of academic writing to the student in my class who is preparing to be a cop, or a nurse, or a legal assistant? What value can the student with six-years of military service bring to the conversation about academic writing? What value from the student has survived cancer? What value from the student who has just graduated from high school?
A rhizomatic/connectivist approach to education, it seems to me, looks for a space within which students can bring their own value to the discussion of whatever, be it writing, art, or zoology. I think MOOCs are one such space, and I'm grateful to be in two of them at the moment: Change11 and CCK12, but I'm also looking for ways to open my classroom in its traditional space to this rhizomatic/connectivist approach. I need specific techniques.
Monday, January 30, 2012
#CCK12 - Shifting Gears
My new classes are changing the way I think about this blog, and perhaps the biggest change is in the frequency with which I write.
I'm requiring all my Composition I and Principles of Composition students to keep a blog and to post to us four times a week. I think I should do the same, but this changes the way I write. As you will have noticed if you've followed this blog at all, I write long posts, often too long. They take me hours.
So I have to speed up if I'm to post four times a week. I will. I'll try speed writing. I'll shorten my posts. We'll see how it goes.
So I'm still exploring how the rhizome affects the classroom. One of the first things that I do in class is start connecting my students to each other. Of course, lots of teachers who have heard of neither rhizomatics or of Connectivism also use group-building techniques to get students to engage each other, but I think these sorts of connections are required for a Connectivist/rhizomatic approach to teaching.
One of the keys to Connectivism is the insistence that knowledge is in the connections. As Stephen Downes says so succinctly in his blog Half an Hour, "At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks." My first order of business, then, is to start students constructing a network of connections, or a personal learning network (PLN), with their colleagues, their peers. I start with their peers, first, because a group of 25 to 30 students makes for a larger PLN than 1 teacher does, and second, because I want to undermine their conditioned reflex that the central connection in the class is with the teacher.
Fortunately, there are countless exercises for building a community of practice, a group, a PLN, or whatever you want to call it, but something as simple as having students introduce each other to the class and tell something interesting about the person they introduce works just fine. It puts the focus on connections among the students.
I then follow up with group exercises, usually very fun stuff at first, that encourages them to talk together about themselves in relation to the course content or to their experience as college students. I want very early in the class to show them that this class values their value-add and that they indeed have knowledge and value to bring to the class. Not all class value comes from the teacher. This further emphasizes that their PLNs go far beyond the teacher and the textbook. I then structure group assignments which challenge them to do something new such as set up a blog. I'm always available as a resource, of course, but if they get stuck, they must seek help from their group first. The group almost always knows. And if their small group doesn't, the class group does. This demonstrates that knowledge is distributed across a network, and not located just in the brain of a single teacher. That's good stuff, I think.
I'm putting words in Deleuze and Guattari's collective mouth, but I think they might say that knowledge is distributed across a rhizome and learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse the rhizome. Of course, they might not say that.
I'm requiring all my Composition I and Principles of Composition students to keep a blog and to post to us four times a week. I think I should do the same, but this changes the way I write. As you will have noticed if you've followed this blog at all, I write long posts, often too long. They take me hours.
So I have to speed up if I'm to post four times a week. I will. I'll try speed writing. I'll shorten my posts. We'll see how it goes.
So I'm still exploring how the rhizome affects the classroom. One of the first things that I do in class is start connecting my students to each other. Of course, lots of teachers who have heard of neither rhizomatics or of Connectivism also use group-building techniques to get students to engage each other, but I think these sorts of connections are required for a Connectivist/rhizomatic approach to teaching.
One of the keys to Connectivism is the insistence that knowledge is in the connections. As Stephen Downes says so succinctly in his blog Half an Hour, "At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks." My first order of business, then, is to start students constructing a network of connections, or a personal learning network (PLN), with their colleagues, their peers. I start with their peers, first, because a group of 25 to 30 students makes for a larger PLN than 1 teacher does, and second, because I want to undermine their conditioned reflex that the central connection in the class is with the teacher.
Fortunately, there are countless exercises for building a community of practice, a group, a PLN, or whatever you want to call it, but something as simple as having students introduce each other to the class and tell something interesting about the person they introduce works just fine. It puts the focus on connections among the students.
I then follow up with group exercises, usually very fun stuff at first, that encourages them to talk together about themselves in relation to the course content or to their experience as college students. I want very early in the class to show them that this class values their value-add and that they indeed have knowledge and value to bring to the class. Not all class value comes from the teacher. This further emphasizes that their PLNs go far beyond the teacher and the textbook. I then structure group assignments which challenge them to do something new such as set up a blog. I'm always available as a resource, of course, but if they get stuck, they must seek help from their group first. The group almost always knows. And if their small group doesn't, the class group does. This demonstrates that knowledge is distributed across a network, and not located just in the brain of a single teacher. That's good stuff, I think.
I'm putting words in Deleuze and Guattari's collective mouth, but I think they might say that knowledge is distributed across a rhizome and learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse the rhizome. Of course, they might not say that.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
#change11: Multiplicity and the Composition Classroom
Well, my musings on rhizomatic education are taking a very practical turn. I have returned to fulltime teaching at long last. My last fulltime teaching gig was at Reinhardt College in 1977. Wow.
I'm also getting back to writing. Since my last post, I have retired from the State of Georgia educational system, left Albany State University (not incidentally), packed my home of 25 years and moved to south Florida, spent Christmas in the Bahamas, and started a new teaching job with South University. I just didn't find the time to write, as I was too fragmented—perhaps, too multiple.
Anyway, I have new footing from which to consider the practical implications of rhizomatic education: my own classrooms. I talked earlier of the first two characteristics of the rhizome: connectivity and heterogeneity. These characteristics lead—quite directly to my mind—to the third characteristic listed by Deleuze and Guattari: multiplicity.
Another reason for balking is that I don't think that I yet understand what DnG mean by multiplicity, or a better way to say this is that the concept still has resonances that I'm not feeling. Still, a lack of understanding should be no reason for not writing—at least, for not writing in ones blog. Writing is where my understanding, such as it is, emerges.
It would be easy to start the discussion of multiplicity in my classrooms with the simple observation that my students are a multiplicity. There are about 80 of them spread rather unevenly across four different classes. Therefore, my students are multiple, more than one. I could aim for some unity by saying, however, that they are all students in one of my classes. This is a conventional way of categorizing reality, and most people will understand this, and yet it is the very concept that Deleuze and Guattari are working against. My statement: these 80 people are the multiple students in my classes is my use of language to categorize, summarize, and unify a multiplicity so that I can make sense of them, and probably so that I can exercise some authority over them. It's the bit of fascism in me that DnG insist is at work everywhere: "Groups and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize" (10). But what am I to do? Deny that these 80 students are my students? What does that accomplish?
DnG suggest a different tack when they note that our significations and measurements of the rhizome, even with the big categories such as Good and Evil, are temporary, provisional markers: "Good and bad are only the products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed" (10). I must make these measurements and significations about the collection of 80 people because I am a meaning-creating, pattern-recognizing organism. I am, for example, the creature that looks at the night sky with its countless multiplicity of lights and sees scorpions, bears, scales, and warriors. Or at least that's what I saw 3,000 years ago when I stood on Mount Olympus in ancient Greece. Today, when I stand on Mount Palomar in California, I see quasars, galaxies, and star nurseries. But it's the same meaning-creating, pattern-recognizing activity, and both the mythic and scientific understandings—those different ways of naming and measuring—are "products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed."
Selections from what, we might ask. From the multiplicity, Deleuze and Guattari might answer. And what is the multiplicity? That from which we select and from which we form those patterns that give meaning/s to our lives.
But—and for me this is the big Sunday School lesson—our selections are never, ever the totality or the finality of the multiplicity. Our selections are always active and temporary, and when they cease to be active and temporary, then they become points of dogma about which we crystallize into little fascist camps. So the multiplicity is that grand ground of being from which all emerges? I can't quite get a handle on that idea, but that is precisely the point: I can't get a handle on the multiplicity. It's always bigger than my handles.
Of course, we humans don't like that. We like formulas—God Is Love and E=MC2 come to mind—that capture the multiplicity, make sense of it for us, and put it under our control, but as DnG point out with their concept of asignifying ruptures, the multiplicity laughs at our attempts to control it.
This makes sense to us somewhat if we think of the multiplicity as St. Paul's God or Einstein's Universe, but multiplicity is more local than that. Each of my 80 students is also a multiplicity. Not only did they emerge from the multiplicity—both for themselves and for me—but they are, in fact, a multiplicity within themselves and within me. The multiplicity, then, works at all scales, both the macro and the micro. A single cell in each of their bodies is a multiplicity (as Wordsworth observed 200 years ago: To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears). All of reality, at any point on any scale that we attempt to engage it, is the multiplicity—not part of the multiplicity or an aspect of the multiplicity or an emergence from the multiplicity, but the multiplicity itself. We touch the multiplicity when we touch anything.
The practical lesson for me in all this is that there is far more to know about each of my students than I can ever hope to know, and my measurements of them through my pronouncements, names, and grades are active and temporary. Even these classes that I have invented under the auspices and within the structures of my sponsoring university are each an active and temporary selection. Each has utility, allowing us to gather, coordinate, and perhaps collaborate, but each is provisional.
The class, the syllabus, the collection of people. These are all temporary anchors that allow us to play the same game for a time, but as any boatsman will tell you: anchors are always provisional, tenuous, very useful to have and very useful to let go. A boat that seeks a permanent anchor is useless and probably a great danger to the sailors aboard.
Well, I really would like some help here with the concept of multiplicity. Those of you with a better philosophical reading than I have could chime in here, especially with a clarification of Bergson's concept of multiplicity, which Deleuze apparently used. Thanks.
I'm also getting back to writing. Since my last post, I have retired from the State of Georgia educational system, left Albany State University (not incidentally), packed my home of 25 years and moved to south Florida, spent Christmas in the Bahamas, and started a new teaching job with South University. I just didn't find the time to write, as I was too fragmented—perhaps, too multiple.
Anyway, I have new footing from which to consider the practical implications of rhizomatic education: my own classrooms. I talked earlier of the first two characteristics of the rhizome: connectivity and heterogeneity. These characteristics lead—quite directly to my mind—to the third characteristic listed by Deleuze and Guattari: multiplicity.
Another reason for balking is that I don't think that I yet understand what DnG mean by multiplicity, or a better way to say this is that the concept still has resonances that I'm not feeling. Still, a lack of understanding should be no reason for not writing—at least, for not writing in ones blog. Writing is where my understanding, such as it is, emerges.
It would be easy to start the discussion of multiplicity in my classrooms with the simple observation that my students are a multiplicity. There are about 80 of them spread rather unevenly across four different classes. Therefore, my students are multiple, more than one. I could aim for some unity by saying, however, that they are all students in one of my classes. This is a conventional way of categorizing reality, and most people will understand this, and yet it is the very concept that Deleuze and Guattari are working against. My statement: these 80 people are the multiple students in my classes is my use of language to categorize, summarize, and unify a multiplicity so that I can make sense of them, and probably so that I can exercise some authority over them. It's the bit of fascism in me that DnG insist is at work everywhere: "Groups and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize" (10). But what am I to do? Deny that these 80 students are my students? What does that accomplish?
DnG suggest a different tack when they note that our significations and measurements of the rhizome, even with the big categories such as Good and Evil, are temporary, provisional markers: "Good and bad are only the products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed" (10). I must make these measurements and significations about the collection of 80 people because I am a meaning-creating, pattern-recognizing organism. I am, for example, the creature that looks at the night sky with its countless multiplicity of lights and sees scorpions, bears, scales, and warriors. Or at least that's what I saw 3,000 years ago when I stood on Mount Olympus in ancient Greece. Today, when I stand on Mount Palomar in California, I see quasars, galaxies, and star nurseries. But it's the same meaning-creating, pattern-recognizing activity, and both the mythic and scientific understandings—those different ways of naming and measuring—are "products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed."
Selections from what, we might ask. From the multiplicity, Deleuze and Guattari might answer. And what is the multiplicity? That from which we select and from which we form those patterns that give meaning/s to our lives.
But—and for me this is the big Sunday School lesson—our selections are never, ever the totality or the finality of the multiplicity. Our selections are always active and temporary, and when they cease to be active and temporary, then they become points of dogma about which we crystallize into little fascist camps. So the multiplicity is that grand ground of being from which all emerges? I can't quite get a handle on that idea, but that is precisely the point: I can't get a handle on the multiplicity. It's always bigger than my handles.
Of course, we humans don't like that. We like formulas—God Is Love and E=MC2 come to mind—that capture the multiplicity, make sense of it for us, and put it under our control, but as DnG point out with their concept of asignifying ruptures, the multiplicity laughs at our attempts to control it.
This makes sense to us somewhat if we think of the multiplicity as St. Paul's God or Einstein's Universe, but multiplicity is more local than that. Each of my 80 students is also a multiplicity. Not only did they emerge from the multiplicity—both for themselves and for me—but they are, in fact, a multiplicity within themselves and within me. The multiplicity, then, works at all scales, both the macro and the micro. A single cell in each of their bodies is a multiplicity (as Wordsworth observed 200 years ago: To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears). All of reality, at any point on any scale that we attempt to engage it, is the multiplicity—not part of the multiplicity or an aspect of the multiplicity or an emergence from the multiplicity, but the multiplicity itself. We touch the multiplicity when we touch anything.
The practical lesson for me in all this is that there is far more to know about each of my students than I can ever hope to know, and my measurements of them through my pronouncements, names, and grades are active and temporary. Even these classes that I have invented under the auspices and within the structures of my sponsoring university are each an active and temporary selection. Each has utility, allowing us to gather, coordinate, and perhaps collaborate, but each is provisional.
The class, the syllabus, the collection of people. These are all temporary anchors that allow us to play the same game for a time, but as any boatsman will tell you: anchors are always provisional, tenuous, very useful to have and very useful to let go. A boat that seeks a permanent anchor is useless and probably a great danger to the sailors aboard.
Well, I really would like some help here with the concept of multiplicity. Those of you with a better philosophical reading than I have could chime in here, especially with a clarification of Bergson's concept of multiplicity, which Deleuze apparently used. Thanks.
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