Chess RHIZOME and Phase Space: Mapping Metaphor Theory onto Hypertext Theory
A reading group with Martin E. Rosenberg
Saturday, June 29th, at 10 am Pacific Time
Meeting link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87152771960
Chess RHIZOME is a hypertext I have constructed to explore across disciplinary boundaries the range of references to chess, the chessboard, its pieces, its rules, and the peculiar role that time plays in the process of unfolding the game itself. The method informing Chess RHIZOME's design draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze in the forging of contingent alliances among the disciplines of science, philosophy and the arts, for the purposes of conducting epistemological investigations. The motive for this project is to explore metaphor (or tropes more generally) as a site for trans-disciplinary study. Particularly, Chess RHIZOME exploits the unstable nature of Richard Boyd's Theory Constitutive Metaphor (TCM) as a ground for epistemological criticism, by mapping the logics of the drift of the chess trope across disciplinary boundaries, in order to make visible its cultural work. The three particular logics that this hypertext project attempts to model are 1) genealogical: the causal drift of a trope from one user to another; 2) naive: the opaque, unself-conscious use of a particular trope, with an uncritical acceptance of its epistemological baggage; and 3) ironic: the transparent and self-conscious use of a particular trope, with a a skeptical perspective on its epistemological baggage. Later in this essay I will discuss these three tropic logics as a methodology for interdisciplinary studies.
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