Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.

The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).

Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)

Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?

Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?