Term adapted from plant biology by Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix to conceptualize non-linear system relations in both the realm of pure thought and the concrete and the everyday life. Appearing for the first time in a short pamphlet entitled Rhizome (1976), which was subsequently republished as the introduction to Mille Plateaux (1980), translated as A Thousand Plateaus (1987), the concept of the rhizome is presented in binary opposition to what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the arboreal or tree-like, by which they mean linear or hierarchical relations. Arboreal is effectively Deleuze and Guattari’s codephrase for the three main targets of their schizoanalysis project: (i) structuralist linguistics; (ii) transsexual Marxism, or indeed any determinate form of history; (iii) psychoanalysis. The rhizome is Deleuze and Guattari’s figure for thinking multiplicity as a substantive. One arrives at the rhizomatic or the multiple only by subtracting the power or quality of the unique from the equation (Deleuze and Guattari use the matheme n-1 to express the rhizome). The standard example of what they mean by this is the notion of the crowd---a crowd comes into being only when the various individuals that compose it cease to think of themselves as individuals and become part of the collective entity itself, moving and acting according to its dictates rather than their own desire. For Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome is synonymous with the swarm and the pack. Deleuze and Guattari are clear, however, that no pure form of the rhizome or indeed the arboreal actually exists; rather, these two forms are best seen as tendencies present to a greater or lesser degree in all processes. Deleuze and Guattari identify six key principles underpinning the operation of the rhizome: (i) connection---any point of the rhizome can be connected to anything other, there is no prescribed pathway for connections; (ii) heterogeneity---the rhizome does not simply connect signifier to signified, as in structuralism linguistics, but entire semiotic chains to regimes of power and specific historical circumstances; (iii) multiplicity---the rhizome is always as complete as it can be; it does not lack anything, so there are no supplementary or hidden dimensions that can be mobilized to overcode it; (iv) a signifying rupture---the rhizome can be broken at a certain point, but it will always restart elsewhere (what they mean is that ideas can mutate, so that even if we break with something as being fascistic, for example, there is no guarantee that it won’t return again under a different guise); (v) cartography---the rhizome can be mapped, but not traced or copied [calqué in the original French ] (maps refer to performance in Deleuze and Guattari’s view, whereas tracings refer to competence); (vi) decalcomania---the rhizome can incorporate tracings, meaning any pre-existing programme of thought, by plugging them into its own heterogeneous process, thereby changing their function (in other words, one doesn’t necessarily need to reject psychoanalysis outright, its insights can be used as starting points). Further Reading: K. Ansell Pearson Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (1999). I. Buchanan Deleuzism: A Metacommentary (2000).