The concept of the rhizome as a metaphor for the mind refers to the interconnected and non-hierarchical nature of thought processes. Just as a rhizome plant grows horizontally underground, sending out roots and shoots in multiple directions without a central point of control, the mind is seen as a network of interconnected ideas and thoughts that can spread and connect in various ways. This metaphor suggests that knowledge and understanding are not linear or structured in a hierarchical manner, but rather emerge through complex and interconnected relationships. I am interested in how this concept links with my research, not only with the complexity involved when mental health is suffering but also the interconnection of all living forms. I was drawn to this image of Giblett because of my love for soil and it’s root systems that desperately need soil to be healthy.
Rhizome (philosophy):
In a paper by Igor Krtolica called The Deleuzo-Guattarian Rhizome “between” philosophy, science, history and anthropology, the concept of the rhizome in philosophy was made a bit clearer to me. The following are extracts from this paper.
In 1976, Deleuze and Guattari published a small book entitled Rhizome with Éditions de Minuit. This book is a point of passage between the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: on the one hand, it records the two-person writing of Anti-Oedipus, published in 1972, and on the other hand, it announces the program of A Thousand Plateaus, to which it will serve as an introduction in 1980. A decisive moment in their collaboration, Deleuze and Guattari theorized for the first time the new image of thought they were mobilizing—a nomadic image of thought (nomadology)—and the new practice of philosophy they were implementing—a philosophy of multiplicities. It is likely that this moment was particularly decisive for Deleuze, as the encounter with Guattari finally made possible the renewal he had been repeatedly calling for since the 1960s.
Deleuze and Guattari’s interest in the rhizome stems first and foremost from its opposition to the root, to the tree. Indeed, whether it is a taproot or a fasciculated root, the root is a plant system that develops along a vertical and hierarchical axis (cutting a plant at the root most often amounts to killing it). On the other hand, the rhizome is a plant system that proliferates horizontally, most often underground, and that has no center or—what amounts to the same thing—that has several centers. In this sense, the root constitutes an image of the foundation or the hierarchical principle (arkhè), while, conversely, the rhizome is presented as an image of the becoming or of the network, of all multiplicity rebelling against centralization and hierarchization.
(Sourced from: Krtolica, I. (2021). The Deleuzo-Guattarian Rhizome “between” philosophy, science, history and anthropology. Journal of the CIPH, 99, 39-51. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdes.099.0039)
Cartographically speaking:
Deleuze and Guattari claim that a rhizome is “a map, not a tracing”, because “it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real” (p. 12). Deleuze and Guattari offer the image of the map as an indication of the flexibility of rhizomatic thinking in relation to the real.
Deleuze and Guattari have left the typically western metaphysical/ontological attachment to thinking — that is, the tendency to think of the world as consisting of isolated, discrete objects, instead of an interconnected totality which can only be said to “be” to the extent that mutually constitutive relations ARE the most basic constituent(s) of reality. And these “relations” are not static “things”, but active, ongoing, processual activities.
Once one has made this mind-switch you are ready to move into a new way of rhizomatic thinking, which, in turn, ushers in grasping the world in relational terms: relations are the dynamic “basics” (NOT things or objects) of reality as multiplicity. And once one has understood this, you are ready for a truly “posthuman” world or future, if by “human” one understands that being who has always attempted to rule over the world by reducing everything to “things” and “objects” to be controlled and dominated.
(Sourced from: Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2013). A Thousand Plateaus. Bloomsbury Academic cited in: https://thoughtleader.co.za/what-is-a-rhizome-in-deleuze-and-guattaris-thinking/.)