15 Aug Rhizomic Revolution
Carrie Lobman, the East Side Institute’s Leader of Education and Research and my close colleague and friend, gave the keynote address at the Cultivating Ensembles annual gathering last week. I love the title of her talk—“Boxes, Dualisms and Rhizomes”—and I loved the talk even more! Carrie urged that we go beyond cultivating and building ensembles which can become rigid to cultivating rhizomic activity, which is always open. I invite you to read Carrie’s talk and play with seeing your work (indeed, your entire life) through the new lenses she offers.
I’ve been speaking about rhizomes for a while now but couldn’t remember how it began. I knew it was at one of the Institute’s community meetings that I first mentioned them—but when? Two or three years ago, I thought. Well, my computer folders and files proved me wrong. I found some remarks I wrote down nearly 7 years ago, in November 2018!
And while I haven’t written anything substantial on the subject yet, Dan Friedman and I are in the beginning stages of a book that will feature what we’re calling “rhizomic revolution.”
But back to November 2018. I wasn’t able to go to our Community Meeting, which is why I wrote down my remarks to be read by the Institute’s Chris Helm. Rereading those remarks, I enjoyed seeing our first mention of what has become such a vivid way to describe our practice. I share them with you.
Hello Friends,
I’m sad that that I can’t be with you today—I have bronchitis and am following doctor’s orders to rest. But I’m happy at how healthy the East Side Institute and our development community are. We are larger, more diverse, more impactful that ever—and we are energized.
The theme of our community meeting is, “We build things to give them away.” But, of course, we don’t primarily build “things.” We build processes. We practice method. We perform. And when you give all this away, all sorts of surprising and previously unimagined activities enter the world.
Cathy Salit and I participated in a Taos Institute conference in Mexico last weekend and someone used the work “rhizome.” It rang a bell and during the week I did some research—both my own memory and on the Internet. And I discovered that rhizome is a very helpful way of thinking about how we’re growing around the world.
A rhizome is a kind of plant that, unlike a tree, doesn’t grow up from roots to stem to branches to leaves. Instead, a rhizome grows underground and horizontal. It has no top and no bottom, no clear beginning and no end. It sends out shoots in any and all directions. It is always open to what it finds and can connect to any point. In the 1970s the postmodernists Deleuze and Guattari turned “rhizome” into a philosophical and cultural concept with much the same meaning applied to ideas and social structures. Another conceptual pioneer, the late family therapist Lynn Hoffman, also made use of “rhizome” to describe therapy with a multiplicity of voices and always emergent.
Coincidentally, our mentor and friend, the Institute’s co-founder Fred Newman and I had the pleasure of meeting with both the French postmodernists and Lynn Hoffman. We never did speak of the rhizome though. I wish we had.
I find it a helpful description of what and how we’re growing. We’re without hierarchy or binaries. We’re spreading in all directions. What’s being built by our development community in the US, in Canada, along the U.S.-Mexican border, in Europe, in Brazil, in Taiwan, in Japan are all so different from each other, and yet they’re part of the same rhizome. They continuously influence and learn from each other and yet they send out shoots embodying the specificity of their location and their experiences. They remain open and can be entered and expanded at any time. That’s what happens when you give away processes, when you give away method. Our rhizome is growing both underground and aboveground in many parts of the world and it is producing community wherever it spreads.
I wish I could be with you physically this afternoon. But while I may not be feeling well, I am full of joy knowing that through your hard work and financial support you’re growing our rhizome here and around the world.
Our rhizome has grown enormously these past seven years. And so has our ability to articulate the unique kind of process it is, as Carrie’s keynote remarks—going well beyond my introductory ones—clearly show. These are but two moments in the creative journey of making/discovering the rhizomic revolution. Stay tuned for more!
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