What Is Rhizome?

Definition

The rhizome is a concept from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and it describes a mode of organization that's non-hierarchical, non-linear, and endlessly connectable. It's a model for how knowledge works, how reality is structured, and how thought should proceed — and it stands in direct opposition to the way Western philosophy has traditionally organized ideas.

The term comes from botany. A rhizome is a stem that grows horizontally, underground, putting out roots and shoots at any point. Ginger, turmeric, crabgrass, and bamboo are all rhizomatic plants. Unlike a tree, which has a central trunk from which branches grow in a fixed, hierarchical pattern, a rhizome has no center, no main axis, no privileged point of origin. Any point on a rhizome can connect to any other point. Break a piece off, and it grows into a new rhizome. It's a system that thrives on multiplicity, adaptation, and lateral connection.

Deleuze and Guattari took this botanical structure and made it into a philosophical concept. The rhizome, they argued, is a better model for how thought, culture, and reality actually work than the arborescent (tree-like) model that has dominated Western philosophy since Descartes. The arborescent model organizes knowledge hierarchically: there are roots (foundational principles), a trunk (the main system), and branches (derivative applications). Think of a genealogy, a taxonomy, a flowchart, or a decision tree — these are all arborescent structures. They have a clear center, a clear hierarchy, and a clear direction: from root to branch, from foundation to application, from general to particular.

The rhizome doesn't work that way. It has no roots and no branches — or rather, every point is both root and branch. It has no beginning and no end. It's always in the middle — what Deleuze and Guattari call "the middle," le milieu, the milieu. You don't start at the beginning of a rhizome and work your way to the end. You enter at any point and follow connections wherever they lead.

This is more than a metaphor. Deleuze and Guattari are making an ontological claim: reality itself is rhizomatic. The world isn't structured like a tree, with foundational truths from which everything else derives. It's structured like a network, where everything is connected to everything else in multiple, non-hierarchical ways, and where new connections are always possible. To think rhizomatically is to think the way the world actually is — laterally, experimentally, without the illusion of a privileged starting point.

Key Ideas

The Six Principles

Deleuze and Guattari articulate the rhizome through six principles (though they sometimes present them as three pairs). These principles define what makes a structure rhizomatic:

1 and 2: Connection and Heterogeneity. A rhizome can be connected to anything else, and it can be connected to anything of a different type. In an arborescent system, connections follow a fixed logic: a branch connects to the trunk, a species connects to its genus. In a rhizome, a word can connect to a musical note, an idea to a bodily sensation, a political movement to a biological process. There are no fixed channels. Any point can connect to any other point, regardless of their type or category. This is what makes the rhizome heterogeneous — it brings together things that don't belong to the same order.

3: Multiplicity. A rhizome is not a unity that contains many parts. It is the many — a multiplicity in the strict philosophical sense. Deleuze and Guattari distinguish a multiplicity from a collection. A collection is a group of things that are united by a common identity (all these things are "books," all these things are "trees"). A multiplicity has no unifying principle. It's a field of differences, each of which is what it is only in relation to the others. The rhizome is not "one thing made of many parts." It's a process of becoming, a field of connections that's always changing.

4: Asignifying Rupture. A rhizome can be broken at any point, and it will continue to grow — not by healing the break, but by putting out new shoots elsewhere. Unlike a tree, which dies if you cut the trunk, a rhizome thrives on rupture. Break a line of thought, and it reconnects elsewhere. Destroy a network, and new connections form around the gap. This is the principle of asignifying rupture: the break doesn't signify an end. It's just a moment in the ongoing process of the rhizome's growth.

5 and 6: Cartography and Decalcomania. A rhizome is not a tracing of something that already exists — it's a map. The distinction is crucial. A tracing copies a structure that's already there: you put transparent paper over a picture and trace the lines. A map, by contrast, is constructive — it doesn't copy a pre-existing structure but creates new connections. A map is open, connectable, and reversible. It can be modified, extended, reconfigured. A tracing is closed: it reproduces what was already determined. Rhizomatic thought is cartographic, not iconographic — it maps new territories rather than copying old ones.

Rhizome vs. Arborescent

The contrast between rhizome and arborescent structures is the organizing tension of Deleuze and Guattari's argument. The arborescent model — the "tree" — is the dominant structure of Western thought:

• It has a center: a foundational principle, a first premise, a root from which everything grows.
• It has a hierarchy: some branches are closer to the root, some are further away. Proximity to the center determines importance.
• It has a direction: growth moves from root to branch, from general to particular, from foundation to application.
• It is closed: the structure is fixed. Branches can't connect to other branches except through the trunk.

The rhizome inverts all of these:

• It has no center: any point can be a starting point. There's no foundational principle from which everything derives.
• It has no hierarchy: all points are on the same plane. No connection is more fundamental than any other.
• It has no direction: it grows laterally, not vertically. There's no "up" and "down," no "more fundamental" and "more derivative."
• It is open: any point can connect to any other point, and new connections are always possible.

Deleuze and Guattari aren't saying that arborescent structures are wrong or that we should abolish them. Trees exist, and they have their uses. The point is that the arborescent model has dominated Western thought — we've treated it as the only model, when it's actually just one mode of organization among others. The rhizome is the alternative: a way of thinking that's been suppressed by the arborescent tradition but that's always been present, underground, in the margins of philosophy, art, and culture.

Multiplicity and Assemblage

Two concepts are essential for understanding the rhizome: multiplicity and assemblage.

A multiplicity, as we've seen, is a field of differences that has no unifying principle. It's not "one plus many" — it's just the many, in their irreducible plurality. Deleuze and Guattari draw this concept from the mathematician Bernhard Riemann, who used "multiplicity" (Mannigfaltigkeit) to describe spaces that aren't organized by a single metric. A multiplicity is a space in which different points are related to each other in different ways, and there's no single measure that applies to all of them.

An assemblage (agencement) is the way elements come together in a rhizome. An assemblage is not a structure — it doesn't have a fixed form or a predetermined organization. It's a temporary configuration of heterogeneous elements that comes together for a specific purpose and can be reconfigured at any time. A band is an assemblage: musicians, instruments, songs, audiences, venues, recording technologies — all brought together in a configuration that could be different tomorrow. A political movement is an assemblage: activists, slogans, tactics, media, opponents, contexts — all connected in ways that could shift at any moment.

The rhizome is composed of assemblages. It's a field of temporary, reconfigurable connections — not a fixed structure. This is what makes it dynamic: it's always being assembled and reassembled, and the process of assembly never stops.

Examples

The Internet

The internet is the most obvious example of a rhizomatic structure. It has no center — no single server, no central authority, no trunk from which all branches derive. Any computer can connect to any other computer, and the connections aren't predetermined by a hierarchical logic. The internet grows by putting out new shoots — new websites, new protocols, new forms of connection — at any point. Break a connection, and the data reroutes. This is asignifying rupture in action: the break doesn't destroy the network; it just redirects it.

What makes the internet rhizomatic rather than arborescent is that it doesn't organize information hierarchically. There's no "root" page from which all other pages derive. There's no central index that determines what connects to what. Instead, the internet is a field of lateral connections — links, hyperlinks, references — that can be created and followed in any order. The web is a map, not a tracing. It's cartographic: it creates new connections rather than copying a pre-existing structure.

Fungi Networks

Deleuze and Guattari's botanical model has a striking real-world counterpart in mycorrhizal fungi networks — the underground fungal systems that connect trees in a forest. These networks are literally rhizomatic: they grow horizontally, they connect any point to any other point, and they have no center. Trees use these networks to share nutrients, send chemical signals, and support each other. The forest, seen from below, isn't a collection of individual trees competing for resources. It's a rhizomatic system of connections, a multiplicity in which no tree is the "center" and every connection is contingent and reconfigurable.

This example is particularly apt because it shows that the rhizome isn't just a metaphor — it's a structure that actually exists in nature. Deleuze and Guattari's point is that rhizomatic organization is a real mode of being, not just a way of talking. Reality itself, they argue, is rhizomatic — and the arborescent structures we impose on it (taxonomies, hierarchies, genealogies) are abstractions that obscure its true, networked character.

Guerrilla Warfare

Deleuze and Guattari explicitly draw on the model of guerrilla warfare as an example of rhizomatic organization. Unlike a conventional army, which is organized arborescently — a central command, a chain of command, units that derive their authority from the center — a guerrilla movement is rhizomatic. It has no center. Its cells are autonomous, connected laterally, and capable of operating independently. If one cell is destroyed, the others continue. There's no trunk to cut.

This isn't just a tactical observation. It's a philosophical claim about the nature of power and organization. Arborescent power — the power of the state, the corporation, the institution — is centralized, hierarchical, and vulnerable to a strike at the center. Rhizomatic power — the power of the guerrilla, the network, the movement — is decentralized, lateral, and resilient. The rhizome, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, is a model not just for thought but for resistance: a way of organizing that can't be destroyed by attacking its "head," because it has no head.

Significance

The rhizome has become one of the most influential concepts in contemporary philosophy, and its significance extends far beyond Deleuze and Guattari's original project.

For epistemology, the rhizome challenges the foundationalist model of knowledge that has dominated Western philosophy since Descartes. Foundationalism holds that knowledge is structured like a building: there are basic beliefs (the foundation) that support derived beliefs (the superstructure). The rhizome offers an alternative: knowledge is a network of connections, none of which is more "basic" than any other. This doesn't mean there are no standards — it means the standards are immanent to the network, not external to it. Truth, on this model, is not correspondence to a pre-existing reality but the coherence and fecundity of the connections themselves.

For network theory, the rhizome anticipated the shift from hierarchical to networked models of organization that has transformed fields from computer science to sociology. The internet, peer-to-peer networks, decentralized finance, and open-source software are all rhizomatic structures — and they've proven remarkably resilient and adaptive, precisely because they lack the central points of failure that plague arborescent systems.

For politics, the rhizome offers a model of organization that resists the centralizing tendencies of both the state and the traditional political party. The horizontalism of contemporary social movements — from Occupy to Arab Spring to decentralized climate activism — reflects rhizomatic logic: no leaders, no central command, just networks of affinity and action.

For post-structuralism, the rhizome is the fullest expression of the movement's core insight: that meaning is not fixed by a central structure (a transcendental signified, a foundational principle) but is produced by the play of differences across a network. The rhizome is what post-structuralism looks like when it's given a positive content — not just a critique of hierarchy, but a model for the non-hierarchical organization of thought and being.

Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome isn't just a concept — it's an invitation. It invites us to think differently: to abandon the security of the tree (with its clear hierarchy, its fixed structure, its comforting center) and enter the uncertainty of the network (with its lateral connections, its temporary assemblages, its ongoing process of becoming). The rhizome isn't easy. It doesn't offer the satisfaction of a completed system or a final answer. But it offers something else: the freedom of a thought that's always in the middle, always connecting, always becoming.