Rhizome (philosophy)

Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their project Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972, 1980). It is what Deleuze calls an "image of thought", based on the botanical rhizome, which apprehends the multiplicities.

Features

In the philosophical theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a rhizome is a descriptive or epistemological model in which the organization of the elements does not follow lines of hierarchical subordination —with a base or root giving origin to multiple branches, according to the well-known model of Porfirio's tree—, but any element can affect or influence any other (Deleuze & Guattari 1972:13). In a traditional tree or hierarchical model of organization of knowledge —such as the taxonomies and classifications of the sciences generally used— what is affirmed of the higher-level elements is necessarily true of the subordinate elements, but not vice versa. In a rhizomatic model, any asserted predicate of an element can affect the conception of other elements of the structure, regardless of their reciprocal position. The rhizome therefore lacks a center, a feature that has made it of particular interest in contemporary philosophy of science and society, semiotics, and communication theory.

The notion is adopted from the structure of some plants, whose shoots can branch at any point, as well as thicken becoming a bulb or tuber; The botanical rhizome, which can function as a root, stem, or branch regardless of its position in the figure of the plant, serves to exemplify a cognitive system in which there are no central points —that is, propositions or affirmations more fundamental than others. — that branch out according to strict logical categories or processes (Deleuze & Guattari 1972:35).

Deleuze and Guattari uphold what, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the philosophy of science, has come to be called anti-foundationalism, that is, that the structure of knowledge is not derived by logical means from a set of first principles, but is simultaneously elaborated from all points under the reciprocal influence of the different observations and conceptualizations (Deleuze & Guattari 1980). This does not imply that a rhizomatic structure is necessarily labile or unstable, although it does require that any order pattern can be modified; in a rhizome there are lines of solidity and organization fixed by groups or sets of related concepts (plateaus in the authors' terminology [1977:32]). These sets of concepts define relatively stable territories within the rhizome.

This notion of knowledge —and the psyche; Guattari was a psychologist with a Lacanian psychoanalytic orientation—is motivated by the intention to show that the conventional structure of the cognitive disciplines does not simply reflect the structure of nature, but is a result of the distribution of power and authority in the social body. It is not simply that an off-center model better represents "reality"; part of anti-foundationalist theory is the notion that models are tools, the usefulness of which is the better part of their truth. A rhizomatic organization of knowledge is a method of exercising resistance against a hierarchical model, which translates into epistemological terms an oppressive social structure (Deleuze & Guattari 1980:531).

Addendum: Anti-Foundationalism in Analytic Philosophy

The critique of foundationalism (or foundationalism) occurs in analytical philosophy as part of the total critique of the project of logical empiricists (Vienna Circle). Some philosophers, such as Carnap or Schlick, maintained that the foundation of knowledge were protocol statements, i.e., statements that reported immediate sensations (for Schlick, observation statements, instantaneous, strictly not reportable). The foundationalist tradition goes back to Aristotle (cf. Analytic seconds), who maintained that the foundation of knowledge was in the syllogism.

Some philosophers, such as Keith Lehrer or Laurence Bonjour, as a result of this criticism, argue for a coherence theory of Justification Theory (there is also coherence with respect to truth and with respect to knowledge). This conception had already been foreseen by Otto Neurath, another philosopher of the Vienna Circle, at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was in fact criticized by Schlick himself.

In the 1980s and 1990s, coherentism (i.e., the anti-foundationalism referred to by Deleuze/Guattari) is also criticized by some philosophers such as Ernest Sosa and Alvin Goldman, who argue that criticisms of foundationalism are in fact they fail to see the features important to the existence of epistemic foundations. In this same line of criticism is the neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, with his replies to foundationalism in modern philosophy and in various contemporary trends.

Principles of the Rhizomatic Model

1st and 2nd Principles of connection and heterogeneity

• Any point of the rhizome can be connected to any other point.
• Semitic link = agglutant tuber of very diverse acts that evolves producing stems and roots.
• The rhizome is a heterogeneous unit. As the tree as the image of the world invokes the binary logic where the relations between points are always due to an intrinsic order and to a homogeneity.

3rd Principle of multiplicity

• The rhizome is always multiplicity that does not allow the One or the Multiple to be reduced; it is not made of units, but of asignifying and subjective dimensions, of broken directions.
• Agency: increase in dimensions in the multiplicity that changes its nature as it increases its connections.
• Multiply Consistency Plan: grid that forms outside with increasing dimensions.

4th Principle of asignificant ruptures

• The rhizome is subject to segmentarity and leakage lines, which always point to new directions, which can be broken, interrupted anywhere and at any time and resurface with new alliances.
• Rupture: lengthen, prolong alternate, change, break.
• Desterritorialization: Enlarge our territory until it reaches the whole plan of consistency in an abstract machine.

5th and 6th Principles of Cartography and Decal

• The rhizome is a map that builds.
• Map: a system fundamentally open and capable of constantly changing; it can be altered and adapted according to needs or “performance”;
• The tree responds to the structural model whose logic is calc and reproduction.
• The rhizome is a productive and experimental model.

Related

• No.
• Group of affinity
• Mental map As an application of the ribozomatic structure of thought.