this is where ive gotten with the idea of the rhizome applied to gay marriage debates...but my analysis has a heafty Foucauldian tone throughout so that is my bias. let me know what y'all think of this:

Some Thoughts on the Use of Rhizomatics for thinking/practicing Queer Kinship

nodal point: i think that D/G are best thought of as providing tactics/strategies of thought-action rather than meta-theories.

connection: they offer some of the most refreshing thinking about agency, politics, identities, social groups in space-time.

preface-in-the-wrong-place: this is off the top of my head; the best i can offer at the moment while on holiday; a few thoughts on the queer uses of rhizomes.

nodal point: to think of queer rhizomatics as the multiple connections of queer kinship--our different/differing relationships and socialities. we can, i think, include the variations in sexual partnerships, friendships, familial-type structures, etc. as ways in which we make connections that challenge/disrupt/sabotage in a virological way the MOLAR (Institutionaliz(ed)ing) structures such as MARRIAGE CEREMONIES and MARRIAGE LICENSES.

connection: However, we cannot think of these Molar structur(es)izations as 100% purely molar organizing functions linked ONLY to fascist desires for the control of our bodies/minds/lives/identities/libidos.

nodal point: if we understand molecular revolutions to be the mulitiplication of possible experiences/expressions of one's desires/identities that, cumulatively, disrupt the flow of the molar organ-izing of these experiences/expressions

connection: then one could view the challenges to church/state relations as well as challenges to the State structure of granting social goods to married persons, as so many molecular revolutions against the organizing function of the State and Religious Institutions with regard to marriage (understood in its historical-material terms as specific machinic conduits of moral and economic power over/within/among bodies-pleasures).

nodal point: BUT these virological disruptions of the molar institutions define and give value to certain kinship forms over others and, whether as intended or unintended consequences, foreclose/organ-ize forms of sociality over others so....

connection: one might read groups and movements that support same-sex marriage as a disruption of the lines of power that disrupt but do not radically challenge them.

nodal point: we can look for lines of flight that alter our thinking/experience of sociality. in other words, perhaps the line of flight would be the same as thinking the impossibility of sociality.

connection: do we now need to get all Jean-Luc Nancy on each other and talk about being-singluar-plural rather than as BwOs? perhaps J-L N offers some ways of thinking difference about sociality; perhaps it's Judy Butler that can offer some help along the way.

nodal point: is any one out there, is any group of folks out there experiences lines of flight with regard to sociality?
and the points of connections shall continue with this thread......

anyway, just current thoughts running through my head and out to my fingers....not a closing, but an extended opening.............
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