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Where are we? The collective mindscapes we both nd and lose ourselves within seem to be rapidly mutating: the compressed \u201curban\u201d density of an increasingly globalized, networked, and over-populated world; the twilight zones introduced by media saturation and the collapse of master narratives; the blurry boundary regions between identities, ethnicities, bodies, cultures; the virtual interdimensions of cyberspace. These new social and psychic morphologies demand that we reimagine space itself.<\/em>\r\nErik Davis<\/strong>\r\nRoots and Wires<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nPolymetric Thought <\/span>and Dub Improvisation<\/span><\/h6>\n
\n\n\n\n\nby Obsolete Capitalism<\/span><\/h5>\n
The present essay by Erik Davis, written in 1996, is of extraor<\/span>dinary importance for our series of books and for the rhizosphere <\/span>thought in general. Despite its 22 years of age, the essay still displays <\/span>its keenness and foresight. If it is true that it maintains the captivat-<\/span>ing vibration of the 90s, the essay of the Californian writer has great <\/span><\/span>merit according to the <\/span>metamatic\u00a0<\/span>perspective of the Strong of the <\/span><\/span>Future: it enriches the Deleuzian thought with the \u201cpolyrhythmic <\/span>splendour\u201d of the Afro-diasporic cultures of the last part of the \u201890s <\/span><\/span>and of the new century. <\/span>To be even more explicit we can say that after Guattari (1992) <\/span>and Deleuze\u2019s (1995) death, the scholars\u2019 approach to rhizospheric <\/span>thinking was running the risk to crystallize in a rigid and textual <\/span>reading of the pages of <\/span><\/span>A Thousand Plateaus\u00a0<\/span><\/em>and, above all of <\/span><\/span>1837 Of <\/span><\/span>the Refrain.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>The consequence was that the musical discourse seemed <\/span>to be mummified in French itineraries of the French-German direct <\/span><\/span>relationship among Proust, Schumann, Wagner, Schoenberg, Berg,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Mahler, Boulez, Stockhausen, Messiaen, with the only \u201ccorrection\u201d <\/span>brought by the hegemonic musical approach of the \u201860s and \u201870s: <\/span>the relationship between improvisation,\u00a0<\/span>alea, and contemporary <\/span>Western music. It was represented by the American wave of Cage\u00a0<\/span>and of minimalists like Reich, Riley and Glass, extended up to the <\/span>Italian composers Bussotti, Nono and Berio. However in\u00a0<\/span>1837 Of the <\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0Refrain<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>the \u201cunsaid\u201d and the \u201cunheard\u201d is represented by the explicit lack of references to polymetric and polyrhythmic minor music, in <\/span>particular of those rhythms and sounds from the vast world of black <\/span><\/span>culture, both African and American. Not to mention the lack, in\u00a0<\/span>A <\/span>Thousand Plateaus<\/span><\/em>, of another great non-European musical tradition, <\/span><\/span>including Indian and Middle Eastern Arab music. Finally the com<\/span>plete lack of all musical experimentation out of the academic tradi<\/span>tion, generically represented by the non-mainstream pop and by the <\/span>Western underground music like the electronic music in its various <\/span>forms, increases the danger of a premature ageing and drying of\u00a0<\/span>A <\/span><\/em>Thousand Plateaus<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span>Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s new concept of rhythm, repeated by the fi<\/span>rst wave of commentators, is then very European, white, masculine, <\/span>academic and elitist. It will be only in the 1990s, that Achim Sze<\/span>panski, Kodwo Eshun and Erik Davis will update the minor sound <\/span>lines with the revolutionary nucleus of rhizomatic thought, that is to <\/span>say the philosophy of Rhythm and Chaos in <\/span>A Thousand Plateaus<\/em>. <\/span>In <\/span>particular, the anti-Cartesian and anti-<\/span>Ordo Geometricus\u00a0<\/span>axis of Erik <\/span>Davis\u2019 essay offers an excellent rhythmic counter-tempo between <\/span>Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s thought and the \u201cpolyrhythmic splendour\u201d <\/span>of contemporary music \u201cagainst the beat\u201d such as dub and drum <\/span>and bass. It redefines a new language, a real sonic esperanto, that is <\/span>a new underground urban axis, between rough metropolitan dimen<\/span>sions, afro-diasporic rhizomatic lines and polymetric, polyrhythmic <\/span>African music.\u00a0<\/span>It is therefore thanks to the revolutionary significance of essays <\/span>such as <\/span>Roots and Wires\u00a0<\/span><\/em>that today we can finally draw a powerful <\/span>abstract line passing through Deleuze, Nietzsche and Guattari\u2019s cha<\/span>osmotic philosophy, Glissant and Gilroy\u2019s Creole and Caribbean in<\/span><\/span>tellectuality, the ground-breaking minor electronic music of a cyber <\/span>globalized world, and the rich, ancestral rhythmical heritage of tra<\/span>ditional Western African cultures.\u00a0<\/span>Erik Davis\u2019s essay paves the way to a new form of non-metric <\/span><\/span>thought, which we consider the prelude to new modes of existence, <\/span>as outlined in the chaos-opera <\/span>Chaos Sive Natura<\/span><\/em>, in favour of non-<\/span>pulsed men and times…<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\nBiography<\/strong><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nErik Davis<\/strong> was born during the Summer of Love within a stone\u2019sthrow of San Francisco. He grew up in North County, SouthernCalifornia, and spent a decade on the East Coast, where he studiedliterature and philosophy at Yale and spent six years in the freelance trenches of Brooklyn and Manhattan before moving to San Francisco, where he currently resides. He is the author of four books: Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica(Yeti, 2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California\u2019s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), with photographs by Michael Rauner, and the 33 1\/3 volume Led Zep- pelin IV (Continuum, 2005). His rst and best-known book remains TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information<\/strong> (Crown, 1998), a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages and recently republished by North Atlantic Press. He has contributed chapters on art, music, technoculture, and contemporary spirituality to over a dozen books, including Suzanne Treister\u2019s HFT: The Gardener (Black Dog), Future Matters: the Persistence of Philip K. Dick (Palgrave), Sound Unbound: Writings on Contemporary Multimedia and Music Culture (MIT, 2008), AfterBurn: Re ections on Burning Man(University of New Mexico, 2005), Rave Ascension (Routledge, 2003), and Zig Zag Zen (Chronicle, 2002). In addition to his many forewords and introductions, Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of periodicals, including Bookforum, Arthur, Artforum, Slate, Salon, Gnosis, Rolling Stone, the LA Weekly, Spin, Wired and theVillage Voice.
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