Rhizome (philosophy)

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This article is about a philosophical term. For its use in botany (i.e. arboraceous), see Woody plant.

A rhizome is a concept in

arborescent (tree-like, or hierarchical, e.g. the idea of hypertext in literary theory)[1] with properties similar to lattices.[2] Deleuze referred to it as extending from his concept of an "image of thought" that he had previously discussed in Difference and Repetition
.

As a mode of knowledge and model for society

Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "

Hybridization and horizontal gene transfer
are also rhizomatic in this sense.

Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a "rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo." The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.

In a rhizome, "culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space."[4]

Principles

Deleuze and Guattari introduce A Thousand Plateaus by outlining the concept of the rhizome (quoted from A Thousand Plateaus):

  • 1 and 2. Principles of connection and heterogeneity: "...any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, and must be";[5]
  • 3. Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, "multiplicity", that it ceases to have any relation to the One;
  • 4. Principle of asignifying rupture: a rhizome may be broken, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines;
  • 5 and 6. Principles of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model; it is a "map and not a tracing". They elaborate in the same section, "What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real."

Arborescent

Arborescence is defined by vertical hierarchy rather than horizontal connections.

Arborescent (

Guattari
used the term to characterize a certain type of thinking, exemplified by the western scientific model, where knowledge emanates from a single stem and ends in predetermined 'fruits'. The concept suggests a linear progress towards the truth, which they condemned as both unrealistic and stultifying to the imagination. It is contrasted with 'rhizomatic' thinking, which is open ended, has no central structure, and is constantly changing.

Arborescent thinking, to

progress
which enforces a dualist metaphysical conception, criticized by Deleuze.

Rhizomes, on the contrary, mark a horizontal and non-hierarchical conception, where anything may be linked to anything else, with no respect whatsoever for specific

heterogeneous links between things. For example, Deleuze and Guattari linked together desire and machines to create the concept of desiring machines). Horizontal gene transfer is also an example of rhizomes, opposed to the arborescent evolutionism
theory.

Deleuze also criticizes the

generativism of Noam Chomsky, which he considers a perfect example of arborescent dualistic theory.[6]

See also

References

  1. JSTOR 3685805
    . Retrieved 2022-03-19. Rhizomatic reading leaps—those leaps between and within texts—are a figure often used to explain hypertext. ... [a] redistributed 'knowledge network' ... If the reader/browser does not understand the content of what he is reading, but is merely organizing it intuitively around criteria based on collective and rhizomatic 'interests,' then the object of research itself becomes a rhizome (growing in one direction due to interest, then drifting off due to lack of interest, all the time growing in multiplicity because of other interests, yet needing a certain stability and stockpiling of information).
  2. ISBN 978-1-58435-088-0
    . [T]he modes of semiotization of an analytic pragmatics will not rely on trees, but on rhizomes (or lattices).
  3. ISBN 0-8166-1402-4
    .
  4. ^ Rhizomes.net
  5. ISBN 978-1-58435-088-0
    . Any point whatsoever on the rhizome will be able to be connected to any other point. ... will not be formalized on the basis of a logical or mathematical metalanguage. ... will be able to allow semiotic chains of all kinds to connect [in addition to linguistic] ... it will imply the implementation of various collective assemblages of enunciation.
  6. ISBN 0-8264-7694-5
    .

Sources

External links
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