DELEUZE & GUATTARI’S A THOUSAND PLATEAUS (1980-1987)

“RHIZOME”

Where there is an end, there is a beginning. This phrase was flashing in my mind the whole time I was reading the writing.

What is achieved is nothing rather that the understanding of how things are. The way the writers wrote it has never been clearer.

The idea of not concluding anything, never define things, never systematize any seem-to-be-related things might not make sense in the Western.

But in the other hand, from the eye of the Western, it all make sense in the Eastern. (or at least Asia)

Rhizome is everywhere where I am from. Cuisine, Infrastructure, Religion etc.

Is it better? I think it’s purer.

Also more constructive if you know how to extract the essence.

Rhizome is a type of root that grows under the soil in a lateral direction.

It has no center-point, to beginning or end, no middle point, no heir achy involved.

It is just an assemblage of heterogeneities.

This is to explain the multiplicity and to oppose this concept

to the arborescent model of the “Tree Structure” (for example : Chomsky’s Tree Structure)

Always comparatively,

A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.

The authors also introduced the 6 Principles of Rhizome …

1+2 Connection of rhizome : Rhizome, at any point, can connect with any heterogeneity. It develops by connecting multiple points and as they connect, they increase their dimension and later become an assemblage.

“A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. A semiotic  chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only linguistic, but also perceptive, mimetic gestural, and cognitive : there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages.” (pp7)

3 Multiplicity : There is no unity in Rhizome to serve as a pivot point in the object, or to divide in the subject.

“A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature” (pp8)

4 Asignifying Rupture : If you break a Rhizome at any point, it can start growing again on it’s old line or on a new line and reform itself elsewhere.

One example Deleuze and Guattari used to explain movements of deterritorialization (break) and processes of reterritorialization (reform). These two stages are related,  connected, caught up in one another?

The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image.

The wasp is not only deterritorialized, by being a part in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus. But also it reterritorializes the orchid by delivering the pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome.

5+6 Cartography / Decalcomania : Comparatively, Rhizome is like a map and not a tracing. You can enter Rhizome at any point. It’s never finished.

The rhizome as more like a map then a tracing. They compare them by describing the map as a performance where as a tracing “always involves an alleged ‘competence’. For me, the map is more open then the tracing. The tracing is much more about trying to capture exactly what something is and being able to recreate it. At the same time, it is hard because the map and the tracing are not meant to be two spectrums with the map being good and the tracing being bad. They even point out that part of the map is it can be traced and that the rhizome many times contains redundancy.

It’s not the case that rhizomes are good and arborescent growths are bad at all, at all, at all. When Deleuze and Guattari speak of how to prudently construct a Body without Organs they circumspectly advise of always having spare land to reterritorialize, always be able to regroup, set roots, however temporary, observe opportunities rather than be carried away in pure turbulence.

The concept of rhizome is a rejection of traditional genealogy. It is the path through something new; variations, conquests, expansions. The rhizome is a rejection of the assumptions and history of the dominant class. However, the rhizome is not an anthropological study of culture, but rather a living organic continuous effort of free the forces that have been constrained.

The Principle of rhizome can and should be used as a tool to explain various of things. The social interaction, Facebook, or the habit of people on a particular incidence. Conversely, you can use them to question the existing tree structure of conventional system.

Where it is an end, there is a beginning.

Picture Credit : ” Neuron-network1″,extracted from MCRUSELLS (2013) on http://theonescience.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/neuron-network1.jpg

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe the space as a diversity of lines, which each get their identity from the environment. They describe the complete set of connections of particles as the Rhizome.

The rhizome is like a structure of roots, though it is different from the roots of a tree, because it is asymmetric and decentralized. It can be In that way the rhizome can be combined and connected in infinite. In a rhizome any given point can be connected to another (principle of rhizome 1+2; connections and Heterogenety). The rhizome has many entryways. Rhizome is based on multiplicities. The multiplicity should be treated as a substantive (principle of rhizome 3; Multiplicities).

The rhizome might be better understood if you compare it to the root structure of the grass or a potato – an unbounded structure which connects different units together and it grows in between and has no units, only dimensions. All points are always joined in a movement from one identity to another.

The rhizome is not tracing, but it is mapping. “The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome.”¹ (principle of rhizome 5+6; Decalcomania and Cartography) When you try to replicate the rhizome, it will only from new ramifications and relations (principle of rhizome 4; Asignifyring rupture). This means that nothing is rooted and no truth is given.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari questions the western worlds rational and logical approach to knowledge and make patterns/tracings of the mind (fx Sigmund Freud´s Psychoanalyze) and for example the planned cities. Is the most of the eastern world based on  rhizomes?

Concerning architecture the rhizome has many aspects. One is the multiplicity of interactions which might be made possible through architecture. Using the thoughts of rhizome can help  to erase borders and hierarchy in the structures of masterplans or building design. Architecture without starting and ending – the architecture of gradients (read Sui Fujimoto).  The reference to rhizome could be the internet (decentralized and infinite entryways etc.) and shanty towns or refugee camps (growing, decaying and spreading by the not planned events of necessities). But how can we “control” the rhizome? And where does this put the architect? It is more less the same paradox, that there were with the atmospherically machinery at “new babylon” (Constant Niewenhuys).

The hard task is to design a space that takes into account that all the elements of the spaces is combined and are defining the identity by the rhizome. The rhizome is like the “short term memory” and we plan our cities and understand them by our “long term memory”. It is easy to relate to the known realities in a city, but never the unknown factors of the city.

We should as architects try to understand the “strata” (homogenisis) as the inner process of the rhizome (like Manuel DeLanda). In that way we give our design the best condition to perform best, when learn about the virtual potentiality. But we should be aware of the rhizome, which I do not think we can control. The rhizome is the uncontrolled environment (selfconsistent aggregat), which direct the design in different directions. D´arcy Wentworth Thomsen was also aware that it not was only the evolution (Darwin) that were driving the evolution of the species. The environment (homology) and the rhizome had a deep impact of the growth and forms of for example branches and human faces.

A possible topic for my personal research could be to investegate, how architects over time have been using the digital logics to explore the rhizome in architecture. Like the “Blur” (by Diller Sciofidio Renfro) tries to deal with the rhizome, in a more or less controlled way. 

The next topic could be how we can learn our digital tools to use the “short term” memory and create more “real” rhizomes? But I think we should rise a very crucial question; are we destroying the rhizome by trying to understand it and program it? Maybe the rhizome is best without the definition.

¹ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari  A Thousand Plateaus, – page 12

Picture: http://emptyencore.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/1219079139.jpg