faire rhit(zome

What I think I'll do is bring in bits of the essay on MP in Pourparlers as they
are relevant. This is the bit about the rhizome from Deleuze, Pourparlers, Minu
t,1990 pp48-9
He was asked if it was paradoxical to see MP as a philosophical system.
'There is today, in the sciences or in logic, a whole beginning of a theory of s
-called open systems, based on interactions, and which repudiate merely linear c
usalities and transform the notion of time. I admire Blanchot; his work does not
consist of fragments or aphorisms, it is an open system, which constructed as a
reliminary 'a literary space', the opposite of what we're doing today. What Guat
ari and I call rhizome is precisely an example of an open system. I return to th
question; what is philosophy? because the reply should be very simple. Everybod
knows philosophy deals with concepts. A system is a set of concepts. An open sy
tem is when the concepts are related to circumstances and not to essences. But,
n the other hand, the concepts are not givens, they have no previous existence:
ne must invent, create concepts, and this involves as much invention and creatio
as art or science. The creation of new concepts with an inherent necessity has
lways been the task of philosophy. Because, on the other hand, concepts are not
topical generalisations. Rather they are singularities which react with the ordi
ary flows of thought. One can very well think without concepts, but as soon as a
concept exists there is real philosophy. Nothing to do with ideology. A concept
s full of a critical, political and freedom-engendering strength. It is the powe
of the system which can alone distinguish what is good or bad, what is new or n
t, what is living or not in a construction of concepts. Nothing is absolutely go
d, everything depends on systematic use and discretion. In Mille plateaux, we tr
to say: goodness is never certain (for example, a 'smooth space' is not enough
o overcome stratification and constraint, nor a 'body without organs' to overcom
organisations).'

To induce a bit of lateral thinking consider this, from a later essay in the sam
book 'The Intercessors',p.165.
'Movements, on the level of sports and customs, change. We lived for a long tim
with an energetic conception of movement: there is a fulcrum, or else one is th
source of a movement. Running, shot-putting, etc.: it is effort, resistance, wi
h a point of origin, a lever. Well, today we see that movement is less and less
efined starting with the insertion of a point of leverage. All the new sports -
surfing, sailboarding, deltaplaning... - are of the type: insertion into a preex
sing wave. It is no longer an origin as point of departure, it is a type of putt
ng into orbit. How to get oneself admitted into the movement of a big wave, of a
column of ascending air, "to arrive between" instead of originating an effort, i
fundamental.'



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