After reading Deleuze’s “Rhizome” from his book A Thousand Plateaus I figured out how fast my mind and critical thinking have evolved due to the fact that I actually fully understood it this time with the help of my own interpretations of things I have seen previously in class. I think all this comes as a result of the many views interrelated in my system just like they are bridged in every other one of us. All this is constructed or linked by the Rhizome, that is why I utterly agree with Deleuze who looks at our bodies as bodies without organs; empty open-ended bodies related to other bodies in a rhizomatic way. That is because I actually believe that one can never build his own education and system of thinking without being affected by others since from the minute we are born our parents influence our ways of behavior, especially when it comes to learning language which starts to suspend the concept of the signified and start building signifiers. Also, as we grow up and start our education, we are affected first by our teachers who ‘impose’ their own views so that they perfectly correlate with ours, and second by the material we read, use, and study which are written or constructed by others. Therefore, all throughout our lives we are being aided and accumulated and we stay that way until the minute we die; thus, forming an assemblage of uncountable entities . However, I think that even after our death we do not fully decade or put an end to this assemblage we have already built and worked on, whether consciously or unconsciously, but it will help form other people’s assemblages, first through what we have constructed as bricholeurs when we were alive that influenced other people (writings, actions, teachings, etc.), and second through our decaying under the soil; thus, acting as an aid for other souls to come to life (plants) or survive (animals).
This brings me to Deleuze’s view of the tree which to him is nothing more than a close-ended, striated, vertical form of life where each tree stands on its own and does not help in the development of other trees. Deleuze compares the tree to the old concept of a book. According to classical thinkers, the canons or the great works of literature each represent one tree which has never been influenced by other canons, unless unintentionally. However, I couldn’t agree much with Deleuze’s comparison because I was able to view the tree as more than just a stiff piece of wood with leaves, but as a form of life getting nurtured from the soil and rain through its roots. When I actually looked at it that way, I realized that all trees are completely interrelated. That is, they have the same source of life which is the rain, the soil, and the manures that help fertilize the trees. And in fact manures come from animals; thus, forming another rhizome linking animals to the trees.
Therefore, although Deleuze convinced me in most of the things he said, viewing the tree as a full puzzle in itself with closed up boarders where no interference is accepted was one point I could not agree with because I believe that every structure of life has other structures attached to it in order for it to survive and fabricate itself. I am not saying that an individual is incapable of constructing his/her own self; it is just that he/she is incapable of constructing his/her own self on his/her own.
Hence in a way, if we look deeply into everything around us and in the way they survive, we can see how rhizomes are found everywhere amongst us; thus, attaching all living beings to one another just like books, in the mind of Deleuze, only exist when linked to other books so that they produce something proficient and consumable in the eyes of logic.
This brings me to Deleuze’s view of the tree which to him is nothing more than a close-ended, striated, vertical form of life where each tree stands on its own and does not help in the development of other trees. Deleuze compares the tree to the old concept of a book. According to classical thinkers, the canons or the great works of literature each represent one tree which has never been influenced by other canons, unless unintentionally. However, I couldn’t agree much with Deleuze’s comparison because I was able to view the tree as more than just a stiff piece of wood with leaves, but as a form of life getting nurtured from the soil and rain through its roots. When I actually looked at it that way, I realized that all trees are completely interrelated. That is, they have the same source of life which is the rain, the soil, and the manures that help fertilize the trees. And in fact manures come from animals; thus, forming another rhizome linking animals to the trees.
Therefore, although Deleuze convinced me in most of the things he said, viewing the tree as a full puzzle in itself with closed up boarders where no interference is accepted was one point I could not agree with because I believe that every structure of life has other structures attached to it in order for it to survive and fabricate itself. I am not saying that an individual is incapable of constructing his/her own self; it is just that he/she is incapable of constructing his/her own self on his/her own.
Hence in a way, if we look deeply into everything around us and in the way they survive, we can see how rhizomes are found everywhere amongst us; thus, attaching all living beings to one another just like books, in the mind of Deleuze, only exist when linked to other books so that they produce something proficient and consumable in the eyes of logic.
