A THOUSAND PLATEAUS “In an interview published shortly after his death, Deleuze commented that A Thousand Plateaus was the best book he had written, alone or with Guattari. It remains a book whose time has not yet come, its conceptual riches largely unexploited.” (Patton 1996, 2) “A Thousand Plateaus provides an example of such an open system. It does not advocate an intellectual anarchism in which the only rule would be the avoidance of any rule. It deploys variable, local rules in order to construct a bewildering array of concepts such as assemblage, deterritorialization, order-word, faciality, ritornello, nomadism, and different kinds of becoming.” (Patton 1996, 1,2)
A Thousand Plateaus contrasts rhizomatic thinking with arbolic thinking. (See Table A). “A Thousand Plateaus is organized around the distinction between 'arborescent' and 'rhizomatic'. The 'arborescent' model of thought designates the epistemology that informs all of Western thought, from botany to information sciences to theology. . . .” (Best and Douglas 1991, 98) Arbolic thought is said to be linear, hierarchic, sedentary, and full of segmentation and striation. Arbolic thought is State philosophy. It is the force behind the major sciences. Arbolic thought is represented by the tree-like structure of genealogy, branches that continue to subdivide into smaller and lesser categories. Arbolic thought is vertical and stiff. Rhizomatic thought is non-linear, anarchic, and nomadic. “Deleuze's thought is radically horizontal.” (Lechte 1994, 102) Rhizomes create smooth space, and cut across boundaries imposed by vertical lines of hierarchicies and order. Rhizomatic thought is multiplicitous, moving in many directions and connected to many other lines of thinking, acting, and being. Rhizomatic thinking deterrorializes arbolic striated spaces and ways of being. Rhizomes are networks. Rhizomes cut across borders. Rhizomes build links between pre-existing gaps between nodes that are separated by categories and order of segmented thinking. “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 7)
Table A.
Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizomatic Versus Arbolic | Rhizomatic | Arbolic |
| Non-linear | Linear |
| Anarchic | Hierarchic |
| Nomadic | Sedentary |
| Smooth | Striated |
| Deterritorialized | Territorialized |
| Multiplicitous | Unitary and binary |
| Minor science | Major science |
| Heterogeneity | Homogeneity |
The first chapter, “Rhizome,” presents a series of rhizomatics principles. The first two are the principles of connection and heterogeneity which say that “
any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.” (
Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 7) The ideal or perfect network is such a system of maximal connection between points. In a later section, we will see how Hamman (
1996) effectively used these principles in describing the Internet. (See subsection on
Rhizomatics in “The Literature”). The third is the principle of multiplicity. A rhizomatic system is comprised of a multiplicity of lines and connections. “
There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines.” (
Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 8) Multiplicity celebrates the many and plurality in contradistinction to unitary, binary, and totalizing models of Western thought. Rhizomatics “
extirpate roots and foundations, to thwart unities and break dichotomies, and to spread out roots and branches, thereby pluralizing and disseminating, producing differences and multiplicities, making new connections. Rhizomatics affirms the principles excluded from Western thought and reinterprets reality as dynamic, heterogenous, and non-dichotomous.” (
Best and Douglas 1991, 99)
The fourth is the principle of asignifying rupture. This principle states that: “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.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 9) In a rhizomatic network movements and flows can be re-routed around disruptions. Further, the severed section will regenerate itself and continue to grow, forming new lines and pathways. The fifth and sixth principles are of cartography and decalcomania: “a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 12) Here, Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between maps and tracings. They state that a rhizome is “a map and not a tracing.” (p. 12) A tracing is genetic; it evolves and reproduces from earlier forms. It is arborescent. “All tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction.” (p. 12) While maps are open systems. “The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted, to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation.” (p. 12) The tracing replicates existing striated structures. All codification, all the dead religions are tracings. The map is oriented to experimentation and adaption. We see this phenomena in networked systems. Constant invention. Networks expand and contract, emerge and recede. Maps have multiple entryways as cyberspace has multiple ports of entry.
Apart from rhizomatics, nomadology and nomadic thought emerge from A Thousand Plateaus as an important idea. It should be already clear that the rhizome pathways and lines of flight are structures through which nomadic movement takes place. But the two terms, rhizome and nomad, are interlinked in other ways. “Rhizomatics is a form of 'nomadic thought' opposed to the 'State thought' that tries to discipline rhizomatic movement both in theory (e.g. totalizing forms of philosophy) and practice (e.g. police and bureaucratic organizations). Universalist state thought is exercized through 'state machines' and nomad thought combats them through its own 'war machines' such as rhizomatics.” (Best and Douglas 1991, 102) Deleuze and Guattari consider nomadic thought to be the minor science or minor language that constantly becomes colonized by major science, the arbolic State. These State side philosophers and scientists operate in closed systems, while nomadology functions in open ones. “Nomadic thought rejects above all the ideal of philosophy as a closed system. For this reason, throughout his work Deleuze remains resolutely opposed to one systematic thinker: 'What I most detested was Hegelianism and dialectics.'” (Patton 1996, 3) Closed systems are segmented spaces, compartmentalized, and separated into categories, classifications, types, and genres. “The space of nomad thought is qualitatively different from State space. Air against earth. State space is 'striated,' or gridded. Movement in it is confined as by gravity to a horizontal plane, and limited by the order of that plane to preset paths between fixed and identifiable points. Nomad space is 'smooth,' or open-ended.” (Massumi 1992, 6) Nomads, the early pre-modern wanderers and warriors, are treated extensively in the chapter “Treatise on Nomadology: - The War Machine” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 351-423) Primarily this entire chapter examines the nomad as perpetrator of the war machine that exists outside of the State apparatus. “The war machine is the invention of the nomads (insofar as it is exterior to the State apparatus and distinct from the military institution).” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 380) Here, again, we find articulation of the smooth spaces of nomadology versus the striated spaces of the State. It is within these smooth spaces, these rhizomatic zones, that the nomad operates, ascending and descending, emerging and receding. The nomad is up against the striated State with its rigid formations of battle. Today, resistant Internet warriors operate in similar terrain. The deterritorialized spaces of cyberspace are smooth nomadic-rhizomatic zones. Deleuze and Guattari spend pages dealing with the metallurgical adeptness of the early nomad. “Metallurgy in itself constitutes a flow necessarily confluent with nomadism.” (p. 403) This tinkering with metal continues for today’s postmodern nomads. “The nomad war machine is the form of expression, of which itinerant metallurgy is the correlative form of the content.” (p. 415) Today the content is the metal of the computer, the wires, the telephone lines. Today’s nomads tinker and invent ways of operating the war machine against the State apparatus on the Net. "
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