Pizza Funghi alla Deleuze e Guattari

The French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari shook up the philosophical world with their idea that the human world is not a structured network but a rhizome growing rampantly. What speaks in favour of the metaphor of a rhizome for describing the interconnectedness of people and places? The notion of a network has a decidedly rational bias. A network like a web is something that was created on purpose with a clear target in mind. It is also expanded and maintained by rational decisions. The rhizome, on the other hand, is uncontrollable and its growth cannot be planned.

Let It Grow

The rhizome knows no hierarchies. Any point of the rhizome will and must connect to anything else (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, p.7). It is heterogeneous and rejects dichotomy as well as unity. The One does not exist. There is no primal source which is bad news for all monotheistic religions.  A rhizome uses experimentation. It improvises. Nothing is fixed.

Dichotomies do not describe innate structures of our world but are mere political inventions. Deleuze & Guattari fiercely attack Melanie Klein’s notion of life and death drives that are entwined in a lifelong struggle (p. 13). They seemingly take a metaphor for the truth. And they are blind to the fact that their rhizome is nothing more than a metaphor itself. This dichotomy wasn’t even invented by Klein. She inherited it from Freud.

Deleuze and Guattari despise the notion of determination. Hence, they say about psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis cannot change its method in this regard: it bases its own dictatorial power upon a dictatorial conception of the unconscious.” The unconscious may be our master but it was the Kleinian school who renewed psychoanalysis by interpreting transference in much more global way. Chodorow did indeed suggest that the unconscious is subject to constant change. The outer world transforms our inner world which in turn modifies our perception of the outer world. For Deleuze and Guattari, however, the notion to be a lifelong slave of some irrational structure which can’t be explained was unacceptable. Hence, they resect the irrational object and pretend that it is external and has nothing to do with our inner self. They searched for the unconscious in the world instead of inside themselves. For them “the rhizome is precisely this production of the unconscious“( p. 18).

But is it real?

Deleuze argues that “meaning is a simulacrum, a paradoxical, contradictionary entity that defies common sense” (Bogue,2001 [1989],p. 73). A simulacrum is a kind of proxy, a copy, a simulation.

Baudrillard wrote in Simulacra and Simulation that “the territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory” (Baudrillard 1994 [1981], p. 1). He assumed that we have already lost touch with reality. He claims, according to Felluga, that “reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model“. (Felluga, 2002). The simulation has become more real than reality.It is no longer a copy of the real world but a more powerful alternative. We neither act nor react but only absorb (Massumi, 1987).

For Deleuze and Guattari simulacra only resemble their models. They claim that the simulacrum replaces the model and at the same time it is all that has ever been there (Massumi, 1987). The simulacrum produces something more real on the basis of the real. Deleuze and Guattari wanted to overcome the dichotomy between reality and simulation by claiming that reality is nothing but a simulation itself. They oppose Baudrillard when he thinks that we get increasingly cut off from reality because we take the simulation for real. For Deleuze and Guattari reality was a simulation all along. Even Kant has claimed that sitting in our Platonist cave, we confuse shadows with the thing in itself. Deleuze and Guattari go even further and argue that the shadows are all there is.

Conclusion

Alas, the world is only a simulation. The author of this pamphlet is only a shallow copy of a guy who has never existed. But neither Deleuze nor Guattari were real either. Can a simulacrum transcend the world of words? Why shouldn’t it when both are but shapes that flicker in the realm of spirits - which is a simulacrum itself. If nothing has any substance, nothing really matters. If we are just simulations of nothing, why should it matter if there are hierarchies, dichotomies or destinies? Any idea is as valid and as useless as the other.

When one begins to take one’s own simplification (aka metaphors) for the reality, things starts to become tricky. Whoever uses a metaphor, is lying, said Eco. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory is  also a political theory. Their deep aversion to structuralism made them reject the notion of any kind of structures. A certain Anarchist sentiment was responsible for the denial of hierarchies, and an anti-religious orientation helped in their refusal of the One. In effect, they did exactly what they criticized in others: they built a doctrine based on their philosophical preferences – a doctrine which is not little affected by their aversions.  They built a philosophical system not on their observations and analyses but on their likings. They deny structures, they deny hierarchies – but that doesn’t make them go away. They even denied that there is anything which is not a simulation.

Humans have lived in hierarchical societies forever – just like chimpanzees live in hierarchies. The anarchistic idea of equality is a nice dream but some structures seem to stand in its way. Close your eyes and pretend that you cannot be seen.

References

Baudrillard, J (1994 [1981]) Simulacra and Simulation , Ann Arbor:University Of Michigan Press

Bogue, R (2001 [1989]) Deleuze and Guattari,London:Routledge

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987) “Introduction: Rhizome” in A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis:University Of Minnesota, online :http://danm.ucsc.edu/~dustin/library/deleuzeguattarirhizome.pdf

Felluga, D. (2002), “Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory http://www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/postmodernism/modules/baudlldsimulTnmainframe.html

Massumi,B (1987) Realer Than Real – The simulacrum according to Deleuze and Guattari, online: http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/first_and_last/works/realer.htm