My November 27th entry, "On beyond Deleuze & Guattari," concerned the dynamic duo and various practices by which to engage their philosophical work. It turns out that Jonathan Sterne picked this piece up on his Blog, "Super Bon!" and extended the discussion into a broader--and very smart--engagement with theory. Check it out.
Jonathan makes several good points, but at least two are worth mentioning within the context of my foregoing discussion. First, he adds a category to my framework, which he calls "commentary." A lot of what passes for "theory," he notes, amounts to little more than one's flatly discussing the theoretical work of others. Second, he notes that what I (ahem, dismissively) refer to as "rhizome spotting" indeed can be an important step in building and extending one's own theoretical work, as in the case of Paul Gilroy's parlaying the notion of a rhizome into a compelling formulation of countermodernity and the Black Atlantic. I couldn't agree more--and thanks, Jonathan, for helping me to fine tune what was, admittedly, a cursory set of musings on philosophy and the politics of doing theory.
On an unrelated note, it's finals time here and the you-know-what's hitting the fan. My posts, as a result, may be fewer and farther between for awhile.
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