arborescent: Definition from Answers.com

Arborescent is a term used by the French thinkers Deleuze and Guattari to characterize thinking marked by insistence on totalizing principles, binarism and dualism. The term, first used in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) where it was opposed to the rhizome, comes from the way genealogy trees are drawn: unidirectional progress, with no possible retroactivity and continuous binary cuts (thus enforcing a dualist metaphysical conception, criticized by Deleuze). Rhizomes, on the contrary, mark a horizontal and non-hierarchical conception, where anything may be linked to anything else, with no respect whatsoever for specific species: rhizomes are heterogeneous links between things that have nothing to do between themselves (for example, Deleuze and Guattari linked together desire and machines to create the - most surprising - concept of desiring machines). Horizontal gene transfer is also an example of rhizomes, opposed to the arborescent evolutionism theory. Deleuze also criticizes the Chomsky hierarchy of formal languages, which he considers a perfect example of arborescent dualistic theory.

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Sources

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476945.

v • d • e Deleuze - Guattari

Gilles Deleuze (Cat) • Félix Guattari (Cat)

Concepts and theories	Affect • Arborescent • Assemblage • Body without organs • Conceptual character • Desiring-production • Deterritorialization • Difference • Haecceity • Immanent evaluation • Individuation • Line of flight • Minority • Molar and molecular • Multiplicity • Noosphere • Plane of immanence • Reterritorialization • Rhizome • Schizoanalysis • Society of control • Subjectivation • Trascendental empiricism

Works by Deleuze and Guattari	Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Anti-Œdipus • A Thousand Plateaus) • Kafka: Toward a Theory of Minor Literature • Rhizome • Nomadology: The War Machine • What is Philosophy ?

Works by Deleuze	Empiricism and Subjectivity • Nietzsche and Philosophy • Kant's Critical Philosophy • Proust and Signs • Nietzsche • Bergsonism • Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty • Difference and Repetition • Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza • The Logic of Sense • Spinoza: Practical Philosophy • The Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault¹ • Dialogues² • Superpositions³ • Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation • Cinema 1: The Movement Image • Cinema 2: The Time-Image • Foucault • The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque • Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet • Negotiations • Essays Critical and Clinical • Bartleby, la formula della creazione⁴ • Pure Immanence • Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 • Two Regimes of Madness

Works by Guattari	Psychanalyse et transversalité • Molecular Revolution • Desire and Revolution⁵ • L'inconscient machinique. Essais de Schizoanalyse • L’intervention institutionnelle⁶ • Les années d'hiver • Pratique de l'institutionnel et politique⁷ • Communists Like Us⁸ • Molecular Revolution in Brazil⁹ • The Three Ecologies • Cartographies schizoanalytiques • Chaosmose • Chaosophy • Soft Subversions • The Guattari Reader • The Anti-Œdipus Papers • Chaos and Complexity

Related topics	L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze • La Borde clinic • A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity

¹ with Michel Foucault • ² with Claire Parnet • ³ with Carmelo Bene • ⁴ with Giorgio Agamben • ⁵ with Franco Berardi and Paolo Beretto • ⁶ with Jacques Arodino, Georges Lapassade, Gerard Mendel and Rene Lourau • ⁷ with Jean Oury and François Tosquelles • ⁸ with Antonio Negri • ⁹ with Suley Rolnik

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