No typographical, lexical, or even syntactical clevernessis enough to make it heard. The multiple must be made, not by alwaysadding a higher dimension, but rather in the simplest of ways, by dint ofsobriety, with the number of dimensions one already has available—always n - 1 (the only way the one belongs to the multiple: always subtracted).Subtract the unique from the multiplicity to be constituted; writeat n - 1 dimensions. A system of this kind could be called a rhizome. A rhizomeas subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles.Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may berhizomorphic in other respects altogether: the question is whether plantlife in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic. Even some animals are, intheir pack form. Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all of their funcdown into internal structural elements, an undertaking not fundamentallydifferent from a search for roots. There is always something genealogicalabout a tree. It is not a method for the people. A method of the rhizometype, on the contrary, can analyze language only by decentering it ontoother dimensions and other registers. A language is never closed uponitself, except as a function of impotence.3. Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectivelytreated as a substantive, "multiplicity," that it ceases to have any relation tothe One as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world.Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescentpseudomulti-plicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivotin the object, or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abortin the object or "return" in the subject. A multiplicity has neither subjectnor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannotincrease in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the lawsof combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows).Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the supposedwill of an artist or puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fibers, whichform another puppet in other dimensions connected to the first: "Call thestrings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might be objected thatits multiplicity resides in the person of the actor, who projects it into thetext. Granted; but the actor's nerve fibers in turn form a weave. And theyfall through the gray matter, the grid, into the undifferentiated... . Theinterplay approximates the pure activity of weavers attributed in myth tothe Fates or Norns."3 An assemblage is precisely this increase in thedimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as itexpands its connections. There are no points or positions in a rhizome,such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines. WhenGlenn Gould speeds up the performance of a piece, he is not just displayingvirtuosity, he is transforming the musical points into lines, he is making thewhole piece proliferate. The number is no longer a universal conceptmeasuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension,but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to thedimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex ofnumbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) ofmeasure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement. The notion ofunity {unite) appears only when there is a power takeover in themultiplicity by the signifier or a corresponding subjectificationproceeding: This is the case for a pivot-unity forming the basis for a setof biunivocal relationships between objective elements or points, or for theOne that divides following the law of a binary logic of differentiation in thesubject. Unity always operates in an empty dimension supplementary tothat of the system considered (overcoding).The point is that a rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to beovercoded, never has available a supplementary dimension over andabove its number of lines, that is, over and above the multiplicity of numbersattached to those lines. All multiplicities are flat, in the sense that theyfill or occupy all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane ofconsistency of multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this "plane"increase with the number of connections that are made on it. Multiplicitiesare defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight ordeterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connectwith other multiplicities. The plane of consistency (grid) is the outside ofall multiplicities. The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number ofdimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills; the impossibility of a supplementarydimension, unless the multiplicity is transformed by the line offlight; the possibility and necessity of flattening all of the multiplicities ona single plane of consistency or exteriority, regardless of their number ofdimensions. The ideal for a book would be to lay everything out on a planeof exteriority of this kind, on a single page, the same sheet: lived events, historicaldeterminations, concepts, individuals, groups, social formations.Kleist invented a writing of this type, a broken chain of affects and variablespeeds, with accelerations and transformations, always in a relation withthe outside. Open rings. His texts, therefore, are opposed in every way tothe classical or romantic book constituted by the interiority of a substanceor subject. The war machine-book against the State apparatus-book. Flatmultiplicities of n dimensions are asignifying and asubjective. They aredesignated by indefinite articles, or rather by partitives {some couchgrass,some of a rhizome . ..).4. Principle of asignifying rupture: against the oversignifying breaksseparating structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may bebroken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its oldlines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form ananimal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has beendestroyed. Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according towhich it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc.,as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees. Thereis a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a lineof flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tieback to one another. 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 makea rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there is still a danger that you willreencounter organizations that restratify everything, formations thatrestore power to a signifier, attributions that reconstitute a subject—anything you like, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groupsand individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes,couchgrass is also a rhizome. Good and bad are only the products of anactive and temporary selection, which must be renewed.How could movements of deterritorialization and processes ofreterri-torialization not be relative, always connected, caught up in oneanother? The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of awasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp isnevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid'sreproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transportingits pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome.It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image ina signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only onthe level of the strata—a parallelism between two strata such that a plantorganization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At thesame time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but acapture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritablebecoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of thewasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization ofone term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomingsinterlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing thedeterritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation norresemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line offlight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed toor subjugated by anything signifying. Rimy Chauvin expresses it well: "theaparallel evolution of two beings that have absolutely nothing to to do witheach other."4 More generally, evolutionary schemas may be forced toabandon the old model of the tree and descent. Under certain conditions,a virus can connect to germ cells and transmit itself as the cellular geneof a complex species; moreover, it can take flight, move into the cells of anentirely different species, but not without bringing with it "geneticinformation" from the first host (for example, Benveniste and Todaro'scurrent research on a type C virus, with its double connection to baboonDNA and the DNA of certain kinds of domestic cats). Evolutionaryschemas would no longer follow models of arborescent descent going fromthe least to the most differentiated, but instead a rhizome operatingimmediately in the heterogeneous and jumping from one alreadydifferentiated line to another.5 Once again, there is aparallel evolution, ofthe baboon and the cat; it is obvious that they are not models or copies ofeach other (a becoming-baboon in the cat does not mean that the cat"plays" baboon). We form a rhizome with our viruses, or rather our virusescause us to form a rhizome with other animals. As Francois Jacob says,transfers of genetic material by viruses or through other procedures,fusions of cells originating in different species, have results analogous to those of "the abominable couplings dear to antiquity and the MiddleAges."6 Transversal communications between different lines scramble thegenealogical trees. Always look for the molecular, or even submolecular,particle with which we are allied. We evolve and die more from ourpolymorphous and rhizomatic flus than from hereditary diseases, ordiseases that have their own line of descent. The rhizome is ananti-genealogy.The same applies to the book and the world: contrary to a deeply rootedbelief, the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with theworld, there is an aparallel evolution of the book and the world; the bookassures the deterritorialization of the world, but the world effects areterri-torialization of the book, which in turn deterritorializes itself in theworld (if it is capable, if it can). Mimicry is a very bad concept, since itrelies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely differentnature. The crocodile does not reproduce a tree trunk, any more than thechameleon reproduces the colors of its surroundings. The Pink Pantherimitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its color, pink onpink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way that it becomesimperceptible itself, asignifying, makes its rupture, its own line of flight,follows its "aparallel evolution" through to the end. The wisdom of theplants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where theyform a rhizome with something else—with the wind, an animal, humanbeings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves formrhizomes, as do people, etc.). "Drunkenness as a triumphant irruption ofthe plant in us." Always follow the rhizome by rupture; lengthen, prolong,and relay the line of flight; make it vary, until you have produced the mostabstract and tortuous of lines of n dimensions and broken directions.Conjugate deterritorialized flows. Follow the plants: you start by delimitinga first line consisting of circles of convergence around successivesingularities; then you see whether inside that line new circles ofconvergence establish themselves, with new points located outside thelimits and in other directions. Write, form a rhizome, increase yourterritory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point whereit becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency."Go first to your old plant and watch carefully the watercourse made bythe rain. By now the rain must have carried the seeds far away. Watch thecrevices made by the runoff, and from them determine the direction of theflow. Then find the plant that is growing at the farthest point from yourplant. All the devil's weed plants that are growing in between are yours.Later... you can extend the size of your territory by following thewatercourse from each point along the way."7 Music has always sent outlines of flight, like so many "transformational multiplicities," evenoverturning the very codes that structure or ing always involves an alleged "competence." Unlike psychoanalysis, psychoanalyticcompetence (which confines every desire and statement to agenetic axis or overcoding structure, and makes infinite, monotonous tracingsof the stages on that axis or the constituents of that structure),schizoanalysis rejects any idea of pretraced destiny, whatever name isgiven to it—divine, anagogic, historical, economic, structural, hereditary,or syntagmatic. (It is obvious that Melanie Klein has no understanding ofthe cartography of one of her child patients, Little Richard, and is contentto make ready-made tracings—Oedipus, the good daddy and the baddaddy, the bad mommy and the good mommy—while the child makes adesperate attempt to carry out a performance that the psychoanalysttotally misconstrues.)9 Drives and part-objects are neither stages on agenetic axis nor positions in a deep structure; they are political options forproblems, they are entryways and exits, impasses the child lives out politically,in other words, with all the force of his or her desire.Have we not, however, reverted to a simple dualism by contrasting mapsto tracings, as good and bad sides? Is it not of the essence of the map to betraceable? Is it not of the essence of the rhizome to intersect roots andsometimes merge with them? Does not a map contain phenomena ofredundancy that are already like tracings of its own? Does not a multiplicityhave strata upon which unifications and totalizations, massifications,mimetic mechanisms, signifying power takeovers, and subjective attributionstake root? Do not even lines of flight, due to their eventual divergence,reproduce the very formations their function it was to dismantle oroutflank? But the opposite is also true. It is a question of method: the tracingshould always be put back on the map. This operation and the previousone are not at all symmetrical. For it is inaccurate to say that a tracingreproduces the map. It is instead like a photograph or X ray that begins byselecting or isolating, by artificial means such as colorations or otherrestrictive procedures, what it intends to reproduce. The imitator alwayscreates the model, and attracts it. The tracing has already translated themap into an image; it has already transformed the rhizome into roots andradicles. It has organized, stabilized, neutralized the multiplicities accordingto the axes of signifiance and subjectification belonging to it. It has generated,structurahzed the rhizome, and when it thinks it is reproducing something else it is in fact only reproducing itself. That is why the tracing isso dangerous. It injects redundancies and propagates them. What the tracingreproduces of the map or rhizome are only the impasses, blockages,incipient taproots, or points of structuration. Take a look at psychoanalysisand linguistics: all the former has ever made are tracings or photos of theunconscious, and the latter of language, with all the betrayals that implies(it's not surprising that psychoanalysis tied its fate to that of linguistics).