Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

 

10 □ INTRODUCTION: RHIZOME

 

and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes, 

couchgrass is also a rhizome. Good and bad are only the products of an 

active and temporary selection, which must be renewed.

 

How could movements of deterritorialization and processes of 

reterri-torialization not be relative, always 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 

nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's 

reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting 

its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. 

It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in 

a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only on 

the level of the strata—a parallelism between two strata such that a plant 

organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the 

same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a 

capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable 

becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the 

wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of 

one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings 

interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the 

deterritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation nor 

resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of 

flight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to 

or subjugated by anything signifying. Rimy Chauvin expresses it well: "the 

aparallel evolution of two beings that have absolutely nothing to do with 

each other."

4

 More generally, evolutionary schemas may be forced to 

abandon the old model of the tree and descent. Under certain conditions, 

a virus can connect to germ cells and transmit itself as the cellular gene 

of a complex species; moreover, it can take flight, move into the cells of an 

entirely different species, but not without bringing with it "genetic 

information" from the first host (for example, Benveniste and Todaro's 

current research on a type C virus, with its double connection to baboon 

DNA and the DNA of certain kinds of domestic cats). Evolutionary 

schemas would no longer follow models of arborescent descent going from 

the least to the most differentiated, but instead a rhizome operating 

immediately in the heterogeneous and jumping from one already 

differentiated line to another.

5

 Once again, there is aparallel evolution, of 

the baboon and the cat; it is obvious that they are not models or copies of 

each other (a becoming-baboon in the cat does not mean that the cat 

"plays" baboon). We form a rhizome with our viruses, or rather our viruses 

cause us to form a rhizome with other animals. As Francois Jacob says, 

transfers of genetic material by viruses or through other procedures, 

fusions of cells originating in different species, have results analogous to

 

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I

NTRODUCTION: RHIZOME □ 11

 

those of "the abominable couplings dear to antiquity and the Middle 

Ages."

6

 Transversal communications between different lines scramble the 

genealogical trees. Always look for the molecular, or even submolecular, 

particle with which we are allied. We evolve and die more from our 

polymorphous and rhizomatic flus than from hereditary diseases, or 

diseases that have their own line of descent. The rhizome is an 

anti-genealogy.

 

The same applies to the book and the world: contrary to a deeply rooted 

belief, the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with the 

world, there is an aparallel evolution of the book and the world; the book 

assures the deterritorialization of the world, but the world effects a 

reterri-torialization of the book, which in turn deterritorializes itself in the 

world (if it is capable, if it can). Mimicry is a very bad concept, since it 

relies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely different 

nature. The crocodile does not reproduce a tree trunk, any more than the 

chameleon reproduces the colors of its surroundings. The Pink Panther 

imitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its color, pink on 

pink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way that it becomes 

imperceptible itself, asignifying, makes its rupture, its own line of flight, 

follows its "aparallel evolution" through to the end. The wisdom of the 

plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they 

form a rhizome with something else—with the wind, an animal, human 

beings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves form 

rhizomes, as do people, etc.). "Drunkenness as a triumphant irruption of 

the plant in us." Always follow the rhizome by rupture; lengthen, prolong, 

and relay the line of flight; make it vary, until you have produced the most 

abstract and tortuous of lines of n  dimensions and broken directions. 

Conjugate deterritorialized flows. Follow the plants: you start by delimiting 

a first line consisting of circles of convergence around successive 

singularities; then you see whether inside that line new circles of 

convergence establish themselves, with new points located outside the 

limits and in other directions. Write, form a rhizome, increase your 

territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point where 

it becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency. 

"Go first to your old plant and watch carefully the watercourse made by 

the rain. By now the rain must have carried the seeds far away. Watch the 

crevices made by the runoff, and from them determine the direction of the 

flow. Then find the plant that is growing at the farthest point from your 

plant. All the devil's weed plants that are growing in between are yours. 

Later... you can extend the size of your territory by following the 

watercourse from each point along the way."

7

 Music has always sent out 

lines of flight, like so many "transformational multiplicities," even 

overturning the very codes that structure or

 

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