Rhizomatic Thought

The rhizome is an antigenealogy. ... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus). Discuss how the rhizome operates in Deleuze and Guattari and link it to one or two of the other texts you have read in Critical Approaches 2.

In the canon of Western Philosophy, there is a tendency to express meaning and meaninglessness as a dichotomy: Socrates life is meaningful, a fool s is meaningless[1]. In Examined Life, Cornell West encourages the Philosophy of the in-between rather than a quest for meaning or totality, the appreciation of the journey towards it, though it, of course, constitutes an impossible goal. This method of thinking is more in line with the rhizomatic methods as outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Life becomes, instead of a journey from point A, birth, to point B, death, a long middle, a plateau. However, we must consider to what extent it is possible for humans to think in such non-linear modes when our thought processes are so limited by the linear perception of time, which is a necessity of contingent existences such as our own.

As Nietzsche famously argued, it is a fallacy for humans to consider language a perfect mode of expression for ideas regarding the chaos of actual life (On Truth and Lying). The gap between signified and signifier is so large as to constitute human language essentially meaningless. Our use of linguistic signs, (Ferdinand de Sassure) the un ion of signified and signifier, encourages a binary method of thinking, which Deleuze and Guattari compare to a tree, the image of the world, or the root the image of the world-tree (1456). West states that Plato was talking primarily about words [signs], whereas I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms (4:39). If a word is binary, then a note is rhizomatic. A word relates in an arbitrary way to what it represents, whereas a note does not claim to claim to represent anything at all. A note has more depth, more subtlety: a slight change in any characteristic highlighted by West tone, timbre, rhythm, results in an array of variation not quite accessible to language. Music is a multiplicity (Deleuze and Guattari 1456), many voices at once, interacting, playing off each other. Like the gap between two numbers, there is an infinity of tone between two notes. Applying this to life: between each event, there is an infinity of possible meaning, in a rhizomatic sense. [A rhizome is] composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather, directions in motion (1458). A life, then, if we are to examine our own (as West encourages us to do), in a rhizomatic mode, consists not of a sequence of events, but as one totality, one event in itself. Yet even this is a flawed perception, for it is to ignore the parallel lives that intersect and offshoot from our own. This encourages us to abandon the chronological, linear worldview that comes with contingent existence. We are within time, thus we perceive our lives as a sequence of events and decisions. Because I was intelligent, I became a lawyer, is a statement that makes perfect sense, yet to perceive this statement as a truth in itself, a tautology, is to ignore the array of multiplicities that make this statement possible. Society s subjective and arbitrary standards of intelligence the practice of law existing at all, as a result of crime or the need of mediation, which itself is caused by - what - suffering, happiness, selfishness, selflessness? Our linear language has no ways of communicating in multiplicities, thus, within every perceived truth there is contained an infinity of uncertainties. Human beings are unable to ever gain any monopoly over Truth capital T. We might have access to truth small t but they are fallible claims (West 3:13). Of course, the search for Truth, capital T, is a fallacy, but that is not the point of existence (for existence has no points, only plateaus). West is more concerned with truth being tied to the way to truth (2:20). If the eternal Truths of existence are inaccessible to us, the only meaningful thing, then, is to treasure the mediocrity of truths, small t embrace the middle ignore beginnings and ends take a taxi to nowhere and enjoy the ride.

Let us, for a moment, make some leaps within the logic of Physics to illustrate a point: if, before the Big Bang, time did not exist, or temporarily ceased to exist, then there must be the possibility of space (or lack of space) that is not affected by the process of time. The actual existence of this space is irrelevant, but consider for a moment the possibility of human to existence within this space. Time would be seen, rather than a sequence of events, as one unfathomably long event, where everything is always happening, you are simultaneously dead and alive, young and old, happy and sad (and every emotion you have ever felt and will ever feel). Thus, time becomes rhizomatic: an infinite conglomerate of multiplicities, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle (1462). West tells us Plato says philosophy is a meditation on and a preparation for death. By death what he means is not an event, but a death in life, because there is no rebirth, no change, no transformation, without death (1:10). The enlightened mind, then, is simultaneously alive and dead, as when viewing time in a non-linear sense. It is in this state of duality that rhizomatic thought can be fully understood: no longer restricted by the boundaries of linear thought, by the boundaries of our own life, we can then see our life for what it is: a body without organs (1455), each event not isolated, but a fluid mass of thinking, desiring hating, loving living, dying. An assemblage. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied (1455). West highlights the Romantic image of time as loss, time as a taker (9:47) because this is the only logical image of time when thinking in linear modes. Today I have x days to live, tomorrow I will have x-1, then x-2, and so on until death. We perceive loss. As an assemblage, though, time is what sustains us. I want to stress, as well, [the perception of] time as a gift, and time as a giver (West 10:02). Without time, there is no growth (though growth is a linear activity), no transcendence. Time is our path to nomadism, for how are supposed to be anything else when we see our life biunivocally, turning to both sides (1457)? There is no such thing as history, or future. Only Nomadology (1460), as we drift, lost, our lives suspended by a string between two perpetual wings of time. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions (1462). Alive and dead at the same time, the human mind transcends the limitations of contingent existence to embrace multiplicities to dive deep down beneath layers of meaning, discovering our own depth.

West asks humanity: why think you need the whole thing (10:29)? Imperceptible to us, the rest of our lives provoke within, fear, anxiety. Why worry about something that may have already happened? We strive for meaning, Truth capital T, when meaninglessness makes just as much sense. Once you give up on the notion of fully grasping the way the world is, you re going to talk about: what are the ways in which I can sustain my quest for truth (West 2:35)? The taxi ride during which West explains his philosophy is the perfect metaphor: a middle, a transition insignificant, yet somehow significant, because it is all there is. New York is built in blocks, but his thought moves diagonally. Music is based upon stringent rules of harmony: a perfect cadence is a movement from chord V to chord I within a scale a harmonic minor uses a sharp 7^th, a natural minor uses a natural 7^th, and a melodic minor is sharp on the way up and natural on the way down. Jazz moves diagonally between these rules. It does not smash them, but takes the best of all the minor scales and creates the Dorian mode, a new offshoot that sounds crazy but works when played with enough conviction. You think Charlie Parker s upset because he can t sustain a harmony? He doesn t care about the harmony, he s trying to ride on the dissonance (West 8:36). Once our quest to achieve the whole thing (10:29) inevitably fails, all there is left to do is ride the on the dissonance. Philosophy [ ] needs to go to school with the musicians (4:54), West asserts. Making sense of meaninglessness is itself a kind of discipline and achievement (12:00). Making sense of meaninglessness is the nomadism of those who only assemble (1461). Assembling notes that do not make harmonic sense, the nomadism of Jazz. You die without being able to have the whole (West 12:31). The whole is a conception of the verb to be. To be whole, to achieve self-actualisation, is a fallacy. Why have self-actualization when you can have actualization, without the limitations of selfhood? To reach, not the point when one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I (1455). The self is the image of the root tree. Nomadism is the image of the rhizome. We are no longer ourselves, (1455) we are the existence of the in-between, we are multiplicities, we are not notes on a scale, but a dissonant chord, we are jazz, we are meaningless. Not to say that we are not important. Just as there is an infinity of uncertainty within truth, there is an infinity of meaning within meaninglessness.

Deleuze and Guattari s project in A Thousand Plateaus could be summarised as to shatter the linear unity of the word (1457). The line between signified and signifier is linear. To write at n-1 dimensions (1458) is rhizomatic. Consider not what meaning can be found in meaningful things, but what meaning can be found in chaos, the infinite connections between two unrelated points. Cornell West s segment perhaps does not quite fit perfectly with the title Examined Life. More apt would be Examined Existence. Life implies a degree of self-hood not conductive to finding meaning. When one forgets the self, when one forgets the verb to be, that is when the true examination can begin. When Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens, he asks:

- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes. Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office, which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why (Vonnegut 55)

There is no why, or rather, why concern ourselves with the why when the what is far more interesting? There is no whole, only halves that do not fit together. There is no harmony, only dissonance. Life is not a road down which we slowly drive, but a whole city, cities, countries. Find meaning in chaos, or shatter the linear unity of the word, pick up the many pieces, and make a beautiful collage.

Works Cited

Deleuze, Giles and F lix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2^nd Ed, edited by Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and co., 2010. Print. pp. 1454-62

Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism. Ed. George Sher. United States: Hackett Publishing, 2001. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2^nd Ed, edited by Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and co., 2010. Print. pp. 764-74

Sassure, Ferdinand de. From Course in General Linguistics CH III The Object of Linguistics. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2^nd Ed, edited by Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and co., 2010. Print. pp. 850-66

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse 5. London: Vintage Books, 2007. Print.

West, Cornell, in Examined Life. Dir. Astra Taylor. Zeitgeist Films, 2008. Film.

[1] It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied (J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism 10)