On The Line

by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari

The first presentation of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of the "rhizome." A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed... There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad. You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there still is a danger that you will stratify again everything, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groups and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes, couch grass is also a rhizome. Edited by Sylvere Lotringer, On the Line was the first book published in the new "Foreign Agents" series in 1983. It gathers together two seminal texts that Deleuze and Guattari would later elaborate on in A Thousand Plateaus. First delivered in French by Deleuze (drawing graphs on the blackboard) at the "Schizo-Culture" conference organized by Semiotext(e) at Columbia University in 1975, "Rhizome" introduced a new kind of thinking in philosophy, both non-dialectical and non-hierarchical. The two didn't expect this neo-anarchical blue-print would eventually offer an early template for the understanding of the internet. "Rhizome" substitutes pragmatic, "couch grass," free-floating logic to the binary, oppositional, and exclusive model of the tree. In "Politics," superceding the Marxist concept of class, Deleuze envisages the social macrocosm as a series of lines, and reinvent politics as a process of flux whose outcome will always be unpredictable. It is, he emphasizes, the end of the idea of revolution, but not of the "becoming revolutionary." Throughout, he keeps dispelling the notion of capitalism as a repressive machine only meant to extract surplus value from exploited workers and suggest that it could be opposed from within by redirecting the creativity and multiplicity of its flows.The multiple must be made, not always by adding another dimension, rather in the simplest way, by dint of sobriety... A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radices. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes... Even some animals are, in their pack forms. Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all their function of shelter, supply, movement, evasion and breakout... The rhizome includes the best and the potato and couch grass.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

123 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Deleuze is a key figure in poststructuralist French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, creativity and subjectivity. Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a Spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. This ethics influences his approach to society and politics, especially as he was so politically active in struggles for rights and freedoms. Later in his career he wrote some of the more infamous texts of the period, in particular, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These texts are collaborative works with the radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, and they exhibit Deleuze’s social and political commitment.

Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, is a study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.

He often collaborated with philosophers and artists as Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, René Schérer, Carmelo Bene, François Châtelet, Olivier Revault d'Allonnes, Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Lapassade, Kateb Yacine and many others.

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

To review this book I'd probably have to understand it a little better. So, instead, I'll share some of what it made me think. Post-1968-French-student-revolution theory seems obsessed with breaking out of traditional, western dichotomous thinking. It attempts to outline or survey the binary thinking that codes and/or controls much of modern life and look for "lines of escape", ways to rupture this status quo. On the one hand, it's pretty heady stuff and rather exciting. At the same time, most Eastern philosophy/spirituality seems to already contain this third way... let's call it a non-way. The major difference seems to be sexual, with Buddhism and Zen looking for lines of flight away from the body and the ego (really, an acceptance that there are no lines) and French postmodernists approximating some sort of ego-gone-wild... ? That's the part that's never really clear to me. A new way of thinking to what end? Much of the philosophy simply derives from acknowledging the many binary elements of language. Polarities. Pro- and anti-whatever. You speak and by necessity you create omissions.

For all intents and purposes, isn't the internet operationally and structurally a rhizomatic structure? Where once limiters such as cost and technical specifications allowed for physical objects distinguishable from one another, now we have a kind of flat medium where the NY Times and fake news and Joe's Cat Blog all vie for attention on the same screens, using the same language. The democratization of simulacra and propaganda. I tweet. The President-Elect of the U.S. tweets.

The search for an outside, for somehow eluding these political/cultural confines is essentially futile as any individual periphery is simply the relative center of an ongoing series of concentric circles once you get far enough out.

It would be appropriate at this critical juncture to sweep aside these virtual multiplicities and just give voice to what we're both thinking: man, you/I should've just gone to bed 30 minutes ago.

[Yu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book shows exact reason why I love literature more than linguistics. Those terms in this book drive me crazy. Although there are some pretty insightful explanations on China and Western issues, still, it is very hard to read this book, or rather, to read this two essays.

It is a pity when one cannot explain complicated things using concise and simple language without losing scholarliness. As a scholar, no matter how many terms or professional words one knows, it is always more appreciated by choosing a simpler vernacular. This ability is especially considered significant in Chinese literature. You are required to choose the most precise word, however, not the most difficult one. I felt hard to comprehend this book with all those linguistic terms flying around. Even though Kafka and Fitzgerald are both used as examples, the passage is rather focusing on psychoneurosis and text. It is too abstract and theoretical.

One good feature of this book is for all the insights the author gave to China, they are brilliant. At least, I would consider issues the author raised about comparison between China and The West are possibly right. But I have no evidence to show the author has knowledge about China, therefore, I can only say that those issues are worth thinking over.

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good primer on some of the bigger ideas in a thousand plateaus, but i would recommend just reading the first few chapters of that instead

[Noam Levinsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deleuze and Guattari are infamously difficult to understand. I would be lying if I said I fully understood this book. Still, the nuggets of meaning I found were profound and provocative. D&G tear apart enlightenment morality, party-based politics, and trees in way that makes the reader ask "what now?" The answer one recieves is "keep moving," never stop wandering, never stop mapping, never stop extending shoots of your rhizome. I read this in a transitionary period of my life, right after graduating high school. Whenever I felt disconnected, I remembered to live as a nomad. I went from village to village, mapping my new world as I walked, never getting trapped by roots or branches. D&G might not offer a concrete political strategy. They do however, offer guidance to those who believe they are lost, and implore us to keep moving.

[Jørgen · Rating 4 out of 5]

First go to enumerate certain approximate characteristics of the rhizome.
Multiplicities flattened onto the same plane of consistency or exteriority.
Like the writing of Kleist, “a broken chain of affects, with variable speeds, precipitations and transformations, always in relation to an outside”.
Or: “We evolve and we die from our polymorphic and rhizomatic flus, more than from our maladies of descent. The rhizome is an anti-genealogy.”

[Yiz County · Rating 3 out of 5]

easy to read, engaging enough, but with abstraction on top of abstraction, i can't figure out how it points back to reality.

the rhizome essay i liked. i can see how it applies to experimental literature and music or the structure of the mind, but politics not so much.

the second one on intersecting lines and segmentations and ruptures was cool, but the problem is theyre describing geometry with words! geometry is for pictures and things. i have to do the diagrams in my head by myself, trying to follow their adjectives and prepositions - and its already been translated from french to english. who knows if ive got it right? and just when i think i know what all the lines mean and the graph is laid out slick in my head, they introduce some new wack term and turn my diagram into a dog's breakfast.

still i like the puzzle. i wish i understood what the puzzle was for.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars? I'd feel stupid for giving it 1 or 3 stars. Zero to infinite stars would close a gap. No stars would create something else, more maybe. We may hallucinate via stars. Or they. Why do I talk of stars? Maybe I wish I never got involved. Bye bye now.

[Djll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like small, dense books.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book suggests some new ways of looking at the world. This book's strength seems to be its innovative take on psychological concepts that are partially descended from Freud. Deleuze and Guattari extend this vocabulary into a very sophisticated political and polemic critique.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

what a wonderfully unfinished inquisition...