---
title: 4 Creative works are cyborgs
date: 2022-05-26
tags:
- cyborgs
- assemblages
icon: 🔖
category: Zettelkasten
categories: Zettelkasten
lastMod: 2022-06-21
---
Nothing we make is truly original. All creative work is inspired by something, draws from something, builds on something.

As Tiago Forte says in the tweet below, creative work is _assembled_. Philosophically, assemblages are component parts brought together in a way that is fluid (not fixed). Donna Haraway uses the metaphor of [[cyborgs]][^1] or "making kin"[^2] for assemblages: you bring together things that might not otherwise fit together instead of resolving the tensions between them.

[^1]: [[A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century]] by [[Donna Haraway]]

[^2]: [[Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene]] by [[Donna Haraway]]

Therefore, when we create something, we are assembling a cyborg rather than reinforcing the boundaries of our inspirations and our ideas.

{{< tweet user="fortelabs" id="1529394868048515072" >}}

> Assemblage (from French: agencement, "a collection of things which have been gathered together or assembled") is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, originally presented in their book A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Assemblage theory frames social complexity in the emphasis of fluidity, exchangeability, and the multiple functions through entities that create their connectivity. Assemblage theory asserts that, within a body, the relationships of component parts are not stable and fixed; rather, they can be displaced and replaced within and among other bodies, thus approaching systems through relations of exteriority. [^3]

[^3]: [Assemblage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy))

-----

- To acknowledge this is to acknowledge the [[rhizomatic]] nature of knowledge and creativity. Are our creative works also surrogates: [2a Metadata surrogates are inherently arborescent]({{< ref "2a Metadata surrogates are inherently arborescent" >}}). If so, would that make them also arborescent *and* rhizomatic, or just one or the other?