good question. i know judy B. criticizes D/G (specifically D) for his "essentialist" concept of desire which he assumes is "naturally" radical and transgressive (his ontology). both she and Jonny-Luke Nancy boy challenge a substantive ontology so I use D/G as commentary on tactics/strategies only. if you read through my comments the nodal points and connections are like commentaries on political action and not agency. i'm working on the agency (ontology) question in the next few months when i will begin reading Judy's newest book on ethics.

what do you think of Judith's work these days? i think i can square D/G's concepts of molar/molecular with Foucault's subject as effect of power/knowledge so that may be a way to think about JB's (non)ontology..............................................................

so i asked my 21 year old nephew who is a senior at UC Irvine and spent last year in france studying derida et al about deleuze and this is what he wrote back. you may already know this. i am trying to understand if the analogy with botany and rhizomes is fully accurate as i am not sure whether the nodes rhizomes have at which new growth can occur are randomly selected or what and this may be irrelevant to the subject of the analogy anyway but i got into a little side eddy there. so here's nephew's summary:

""Their most important books were written in two volumes and were written by the two of them (a fact they don't try to conceal). The overall title was "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" and the two books were "Anti-Oedipus" (1972) and "A Thousand Plateaus" (1980). The two volumes total some 500 or so pages but in short they critique psychoanalytical theory by relaxing the notion of Oedipus and it's relation to behavior.
Basically they tend to shift the focus to an understanding of how desire works instead of limiting a certain behavioral tendency to the triad of "son-father-mother". That's pretty much what they talk about in Anti-Oedipus. In A Thousand Plateaus (this is where the work on rhizomes comes in), they write each chapter as a plateau that tackles a different idea. Here they are essentially trying to disrupt linear notions of reading a text and also notions of linearity in general. I haven't finished this one, but one thing that is important to remember, and this goes for Anti-Oedipus as well, is that their form (style of writing) is very important. That's the main thing that stuck out to me when I first started reading them. They have a very impassioned style of writing which I think makes their stuff really powerful. What you referred to as "rhizomatics" comes from the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus. In short, the essay attempts to conceive of progress or growth in a non-hierarchical way. He uses the example of the typical conception everyone has of a tree (something that grows upward) and argues that this mode of thinking is imprinted in our way of thinking about a lot of things
- here he speaks of Chomsky's Tree Structure in Linguistic theory. He contrasts this top-bottom way of thinking with what he calls the idea of the "rhizome". A rhizome (which is essentially a root that grows outward in varied fashions) is here used as a symbol, or a new way of conceiving of power relations, desires, growth, change. He goes on to speak about the various aspects of a rhizome which distinguish it - something about it cutting outward and shooting off in all sorts of ways, breaking at one part and reconstituting itself in another. I really like the idea and the image of the rhizome is very aesthetically pleasing. You should read it, or at least the introduction which is very short. The only thing I know about Jean-Luc Nancy was that Derrida wrote a book called "Toucher Jean-Luc Nancy" which I've seen translated as "On Touching Jean-Luc Nancy". I think he and Derrida were good friends and in the copy of Liberation printed the day after Derrida's death, I think he wrote one of the obituaries. Besides what I already said, I think Deleuze went on to write some books on his own which were pretty influential in the realm of critical theory, one was called Difference and Repetition which is pretty good. Anti-Oedipus (brings out a lot of other themes regarding - schizophrenia, "the body without organs", deterritorialization, and of course, capitalism). But the intro that talks about rhizomes is pretty accessible as well.""

So, i've got to absorb this and read abit. it seems to reflect from various philosphical currents. how does this apply to queer space and queer philosophy/theory? interesting thread here. i'' be back soon. well actually i am going away for a couple of weeks and will be very unable to communicate so it will most likely be towards the end of january. i am also intrigued by the Jean Luc Nancy book on Hegel.