Rhizome: Beyond Networks and Hierarchies

Abstract

This work is the final one in a series of articles on possible types of organiza­tion of global and possible measures to counteract the loss of autonomy by particular individuals – turning them into Homo Cells – human cells of a more global organism. The task set before it and solved in it is to demonstrate the differences between the concept of “Rhizome” from the other two types of organization – hierarchy and network – and its heuristic potential for solving the issue of individual autonomy. In previous works, it was shown that this question was posed by Kant as the main task of the Enlightenment. Subse­quently, this problematic field inherited the current of post-anarchism, which takes its conceptual apparatus from the philosophical system of G. Deleuze and, moreover, is the ideological heir to the Kantian project. In the discourse of Russian academic philosophy, “Rhizome” was likened to the concept of “Network” (in the form in which it was developed within the framework of the Actor-Network theory), known in Russian literature on organization the­ory as a decentralized structure, traditionally opposed to a centralized struc­ture, i.e. “hierarchical”. The consequence of such inattention, or the habit of thinking through analogies, was the complete absence at the moment of qualified research devoted to one of the main motives of the philosophy of Deleuze – the search for new thinking. This text is intended to show the possi­bility of a different understanding of the concept of “Rhizome”, which opens up the possibility of solving a more important task at the present time – the discovery of a new thinking capable of asserting its autonomy in a society riddled with networked and hierarchized control structures.