Rhizomes
...we enumerate certain approximate characteristics of the rhizome. 1&2) Principle of connection ... any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from a root or a tree, which plots a point, fixes an order ... 3) Principle of Multiplicity: ... there is no unity to serve as a pivot ... A multiplicity has neither subject nor object ... 4) Principle of a signifying rupture: A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines ... 5) Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure.
Deleuze and Guattari (1980, 1987)
If we had to face a massive single undivided world we would be completely stymied;
division
A page on distinctions within thought.
is necessary to allow thought. However, what is not necessary are any particular divisions. Every individual, every society, and every culture develops habits of categorization;
divisions
Does language cut Nature at her joints?
which we fondly believe to be independent of ourselves. These are indeed necessary for language, but Deleuze and Guattari, surely rightly, suspect that such habits are treacherous. They seek a brave new world, and want to throw their readers straight into it. Texts (including theirs and this) are
linear,
Stories as the basis of thought.
subserving, patriarchal, and didactic to a greater or lesser extent. The writers present an alternative concept which gives an exhilarating, creative, fecund ride. In place of the
tree
On the (wrongful?) centrality of the tree analogy in our thinking
they offer the (somewhat shaky) analogy of the rhizome - summarised in the above quote. Asserting that our thoughts are nonlinear is most welcome, but for me, even more valuable is the eschewing of didacticism. I too do not wish to tell you; I want to entice you.
The French Mille Plateaux was published in 1980. In 1987 Brian Massumi gave his English translation the title A Thousand Plateaus, the quote is reduced from the 2014 Bloomsbury Academic edition pages 5 to 11. Any quote from such a source is problematic, in full it would be tiresome, paraphrased it would lack the authors intended ambiguity, annoyance and impact; the above is a compromise retaining their words but cutting them down drastically.
I have no photographs of ‘underground stems’ (or rhizomes), hopefully this photograph offers a comparable analogy, it is of a ragged stepped path in the northern forests of Tenerife, and maybe conveys a sense of direction that is broken, obstructed, ramified and unpredictable.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 2nd August 2025
...guide to this site