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Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

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number <strong>of</strong> interconnected nodes, or points. Each node is connected to at least one otherby ties, or connections. For example, a node could be a computer, a person, or a firm. <strong>The</strong>ties that connect the nodes could be a communications protocol, a family relationship, ora business partnership. “Flow” is what passes between the nodes along the connections:information, love, gossip, or money (Barney 26). Following Castells’s premise, thisproject uses the concept <strong>of</strong> network organization to analyze the activities andperformance choices <strong>of</strong> the Yippies as they created revolutionary action-theater. <strong>The</strong>Yippie network is built <strong>of</strong> nodes <strong>of</strong> individual activists (a hippie, Black Panther, or antiwarcampaigner) and audience members (a passer-by, or President Johnson). <strong>The</strong>Yippies’ playful public performances act as connections between these nodes. <strong>The</strong>potential for communitas is the flow that moves, by means <strong>of</strong> the performance, betweenthe nodes <strong>of</strong> the Yippie network.<strong>The</strong> network also has potential as a scholarly methodology, as Frenchphilosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari demonstrate in A Thousand Plateaus:Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Deleuze and Guttari take the concept <strong>of</strong> therhizome from biology and use it as a metaphor for their non-hierarchical organizationalstructure—essentially a network <strong>of</strong> multiple connections between different topics (7).<strong>The</strong>ir nodes include texts, modes <strong>of</strong> investigation like semiotics, concepts like power, andspecific social materialities. <strong>The</strong> rhizome or network structure can seem chaotic becauseit is not unified and can extend in multiple directions (8). But its strength lies in theability <strong>of</strong> the network to continually find new connections between nodes. With therhizome as their organizational structure, Deleuze and Guttari investigate the concept <strong>of</strong>20

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