The Botanic Image of Thought

PACHILLA, PABLO

Campinas

Congreso; Deleuze Studies; 2018

UNICAMP

You might wonder why I?m talking about a ?botanic? image, when Deleuze and Guattari specifically vituperate the image of the tree, while opposing it that of the rhizome. ?Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!? (MP 36, MPe 24) However, there are traits of plants in general, regardless of the distinction between tree and rhizome, which allow us to think of a new image of thought. As Guattari and Deleuze point out, the matter is not whether an organism has roots or rhizomes. ?Plants with roots or radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether: the question is whether plant life in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic.? (MP 13, MPe 6) As it turns out, the writing persona of A Thousand Plateaus concludes that it is: ?The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else?with the wind, an animal, human beings?? (MP 18, MPe 11). That ?something else?, in turn, exceeds the aforementioned elements; in fact, these already presuppose plants. While air is simply a by-product of plants, all animals?including of course human beings?are rendered possible by photosynthesis. Through this process of capturing and transforming solar energy, plants, algae and cyanobacteria build an atmosphere, that is, they create the world which all the other living beings inhabit, rendering the chaotic chaoid.