In this essay/interview I would like to ask an average Deleuzian about the rhizome, and to question the rhizome itself. And, moreover, what I would like to do is to discover the American rhizome. And, in the end, we may hopefully form a rhizome.
Let us start on the plateau, somewhere in the middle. Our interviewee, unsurprisingly Pink Panther- a Deleuzian, is sitting in front of me in his armchair with Mille Plateaus on his lap. (I suggest that the reader should get the book from his library as well in order to fully enjoy the interview.) Mr Pink is smoking, and displaying his awfully long nails.
Mr. Pink, I would like to pop analyse your scope, which you call rhizomatics. Do you have a map on you?
Yes, but no copies available, of course.
Never mind. Where do you come from? America?
You’d better not asked totally useless questions. Anyway, if I were an American, I would live in the West among the Indians and the frontier-men.
As a hypothetical American, you probably believe in God, don’t you?
Yes, in case He likes horticulture. I don’t care about agricultural Gods. My American God must be immanent. Think about Emerson, one of the most rhizomatic Americans… he had some roots, didn’t he? The European dialectic trees…but he climbed them. He suffered from the transcendence disease, but at the same time was a pantheist; he was indeed rhizomatic, you know. It is true that, on the one hand, his work is teeming with many of his favourites: Plato, Hegel, Swedenborg, frontiers, and Coleridge. On the other hand, Emerson was always ready to become himself in all the assemblage machines - his essays. He was an absolutely grassy man. His antimemory was amazing. He preferred the circular direction in motion, since his circles are always growing from the middle. So you can always connect Emerson to Amsterdam.
In what way?
In my opinion, it might be inspirational to read Emerson or Whitman in Amsterdam, which is a sacred place for all rhizomatists, schizoanalysts, micropoliticians, stratoanalysts, and pragmatists since it is thoroughly rhizomatic. I spent there the honeymoon with my wife. And I must say it was lovely. I should recommend it to anybody. Believe me, Amsterdam is the right place to go if you want to fulfil your love. We finally became the cat and the baboon there. We also tried the orchid and the wasp, which was also extremely vitalizing. Actually, a Deleuzian in love will be most probably found in Amsterdam.
I can’t help imagining crowds of people heading for Amsterdam after reading what you’ve just said. Anyway, I am glad that we’ve arrived at the plateau of intimacy, could you say something about the sexual life of a Deleuzian?
Sexuality cannot enslave us. We attained quite a high degree of liberation from reproduction and genitality. We are not coming, but becoming…and this is a veritable becoming, our sexual life is a genuine multiplicity.
You seem not to be willing to tell us more about it, or?
That’s right. But to satiate your curious readers, I can give a piece of good advice to them: Forget the despotism of Oedipus! Don’t go for the root, follow the canal…follow Patti Smith, cause she was good at talking about sex. And follow Whitman, too.
All right. Let me go for the root, though, at least in my following question: Is it true that you, Deleuzians, dislike roots and trees in general?
I wouldn’t say we dislike them. No, that is a misunderstanding. It’s just that we are fed up with them. All we need is refreshment; we need to be different, and to create something new. That’s why we prefer anticultural books to the cultural ones.
What do you mean?
On the whole, there are three types of books. There is a root-book, which is the noblest and the most conservative one. All it can do is to reflect or imitate. Obviously, it works merely with dialectics and binary logic. This is the weariest kind of thought, don’t you think?
What about the other two types then?
The second type is more like a radicle system rather than a root system: doctores angelici (think of Joycean words and Nietzschian aphorisms) in destroying the linear unity founded a higher one, the unity of a circle. But such books still form a totality, because they include the mystification law - the more fragmented the more total. These books are somewhat mimetic and thus boring as well. But there is a notable difference, this radicle-system world is chaotic, it is not cosmos any more. As to the third type of books, these are what we call the rhizome, of course.
Tell us more. We want to hear all about the rhizome book.
Well, if you are able to subtract the One, which would probably assume being sober, you can form a rhizome. The book is like a bulb or a tuber; it’s like a pack of wolves. It works on the principle of multiplicity.
But as you have said this is also “a principle”, I thought you despised works built on firm principles?
What I am speaking about, is a totally different issue. The principle of the rhizome is a machine in fact. Generally, there are four principles, encompassed in one machine, which produce the rhizome: Connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, and the principle of rupture.
But still, isn’t this something typical of a root system, I mean to be based on some pre-established principles?
Of course, but I can’t see the point. A new rhizome can always form in the heart of a tree or in the hollow of a root. Actually, there are often arborescent traits in rhizomes. You should never forget this: in order to form a rhizome, you must increase your territory by deterritorialisation.
But it remains a territory, doesn’t it?
But the territory is different, which is astounding…can’t you see that? America is an exciting country, and you may ask if it is a territory at all, cause everything important that has happened there forms a rhizome - beatniks, the underground, bands and gangs. America is reversing since its East is in the West. There the Earth comes full circle. The seam of the world is to be found in America. It is obviously a short-term memory business. Therefore, everything can come together in that rhizomatic country. And its capitalism is a neocapitalism, since it is the very nature of this regime; I mean to be at the crossroads of all kinds of formations.
Thank you, Mr Pink, it was a great pleasure talking to you about Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome. I hope that the readers have enjoyed your peculiar and highly allusive/plagiarising approach.
To conclude, let me quote D&G themselves: “The problem of writing: in order to designate something exactly, anexact expressions are utterly unavoidable. Not at all because it is a necessary step, or because one can only advance by approximations: anexactitude is in no way an approximation; on the contrary, it is the exact passage of that which is under way.”[1] After replacing the word “exact” with the word “serious” and after applying such a new statement on this essay/interview, the reader will supposedly understand why it was impossible to stick to the conventional form of academic writing in dealing with D&G’s rhizomatic text. To make a serious statement about that, it was inevitable to work on a rather unserious plateau.
Deleuze Gilles, Guattari Félix: A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translation: Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press), pp. 3-25
