Trajectories: mapping rhizomes.

Bennett, Michael Y.

Maps ... are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one map to the next, it is not a matter of searching for an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclosures, which necessarily go from bottom to top. There is not only a reversal of directions, but also a difference in nature: the unconscious no longer deals with persons and objects, but with trajectories and becomings....

--Gilles Deleuze (1)

Disclaimer

experiment, n. The action of trying anything, or putting it to proof; a test, trial; (2) the following article.

The beautiful thing about the hard sciences (e.g., chemistry, physic, etc., and I mean no disrespect to those fields that fall outside of the common designation "hard sciences"), is the experiment. Or rather, more wonderful than even the experiment is the inherent acknowledgement that the scientist begins with only a hypothesis and that the evidence gathered sculpts the hopefully-publishable paper. The scientist cares not what path the evidence takes him or her, or whether or not his or her hypothesis was right in the first place. A successful scientist gets paid to evaluate the differences in his or her findings with the scientist's hypothesis. Scientists must reconcile each turn within a rhizome. This is the Scientific Method, the dominant form of scientific inquiry for five hundred or so years.

This paper is an experiment testing a two-fold hypothesis. The two hypotheses are as follows: 1) a modified Scientific Method can be used effectively to conduct research in the field of English Literature, Critical Theory (Cultural Studies) and Human Sciences (as well as, I presume, every other social science) 2) this paper, which is an inquiry on maps will, in fact, function as a map. The two hypotheses may, however, be in fact one. A paper which acts like a Deleuzean map has similar properties to that of the Scientific Method: observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion.

I, however, do not want to spend my time on this paper trying to employ the strict Scientific Method or trying to show similarities to it. I invoke the Scientific Method for the possibility it presents. Basically every paper in the field of English Literature has an observation, hypothesis (thesis), experiment (evidence) and a conclusion (they already resemble the Scientific Method). But how often does the writer prove his or her hypothesis incorrect? Never (or at least I have never encountered this). My aim in this paper is to 'experiment' with a new method of inquiry. This inquiry works like a Deleuzean map.

Method of Inquiry

I will describe this paper as a series of displacements. I am beginning the paper with the above quote from "What Children Say." This is the observation (or Deleuze's observation). I will then hypothesize about this quote. It is the experiment that will seem extraordinary. Each piece of new evidence will take the paper in a different direction. After each piece of evidence is introduced, it will be my job to draw conclusions about the displacement. This conclusion is only meant to be a conclusion to one part of the whole rhizome (whose nature is infinite). Let me put it more simply, I am following one possible path this paper could take. This will be only one of the many possible papers produced. This paper may be continued ad infinitum, either from the 'end' of this paper, or from any point within it. I hope this will give you some idea as to how this paper will work, but I hesitate to explain any more, for I want to leave the possibilities as open as humanly possible. A becoming-rhizome is what is desired for this paper.

Mapping Maps

To begin this first section, I hesitate to copy the exact same quote that this paper started with, but I feel as though, even though these are the exact same words, when superimposed on the first, they will have a different ring to it because of the displacement that occurred from the start of the paper to this point:

   Maps ... are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself
   modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in
   the preceding one: from one map to the next, it is not a matter of
   searching for an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map
   is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds
   and enclosures, which necessarily go from bottom to top. There is
   not only a reversal of directions, but also a difference in nature:
   the unconscious no longer deals with persons and objects, but with
   trajectories and becomings.... (3)

In beginning this section with the 'same' quote as I started the paper, I am reminded of Jorge Luis Borges' short story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." (4) In this story, the narrator, with much admiration, describes the most ambitious work of the ficticious author, Pierre Menard. Menard is lauded by the narrator as writing Don Quixote, not as a seventeenth century Spaniard but as a twentieth century Frenchman; they both managed to come up with the same text during different eras. The words on the page are identical in Cervantes' Quixote and Menard's Quixote, but the narrator excitedly points out the differences in the text. The narrator will read a passage from Cervantes' text and then read the exact same passage from Menard's text. With much delight, the narrator finds Menard's Quixote richer than the original.

At first glance, the story appears to be not much more than a clever joke. But maybe that is because we examine books--and more generally, maps--incorrectly. We seem to think that there is an unassailable origin. And once we find that origin, everything can spring from it. If Menard could 'copy' Cervantes' text, how do we know that Cervantes' did not 'copy' the same text from another prisoner? And that prisoner from someone else? And that someone else from another? Maybe it goes as far back as the Bible: the ultimate origin? Maybe, Menard's Quixote IS the Bible. I did not mean to go off on such a tangent, but I believe that neither did all of the 'authors' of A Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights, or The Book of a Thousand and One Nights, or A Thousand and One Arabian Nights and all of their permutations). They took their path and did not look back. They continued from History; we generally look to History.

Let us examine this story in another way. What if we think about a seventeeth century Spaniard reading the Quixote and a twentieth century French[wo]man (let us say) reading the same text? Is it possible that, for example, a seventeenth century, forty-two year old soldier from Madrid and an early twentieth century, fourteen year old girl from provincial France, who never traveled more than five miles from where she was born, are reading the same text? First of all, there is the translation issue. But since this is a contrived scenario, let us say that this girl's grandfather was a wine merchant and the girl's mother spent a good deal of her youth in Alacante, Spain and taught her daughter to speak and read Spanish. Now, is it in any way possible that these two Quixotes are the same? If you asked these two for a one paragraph synopsis, would you not expect to get entirely different texts?

This is how I want to think about the Deleuze quote. What has been displaced between the two quotes? From the first quote to this point? From three paragraphs up to this point? Here I have attempted to create a similar milieu so that the Deleuze quotes above might become the Quixote from Borges' story. This paper is about trajectories, and is a trajectory itself.

Displacing Deleuze

Draw a straight line on a blank piece of paper. Now, crumple up that piece of paper. Make sure that it is as crumpled as possible; it should be no more than an inch and a half in diameter. Once you are certain that it can not be made any smaller, open up that piece of paper. Now, look at the line.

Every time you read a book, you come across lines written across the page. As a good reader, you should be able to hold the book in your hand, condensed in a tiny ball that can be thrown at people when they ask what the book was about. When these tiny balls are thrown at each other, they slowly open to reveal mounds and crevasses. Every opened piece of paper has its own unique form. The lines written across the page are all, however, more complex than before; they have taken form, they are three-dimensional. They are no longer straight lines.

How come we read like this but do not write like this?

If we want to write like this, what would it look like? I dare not guess, for I do not think I have that right.

That does not mean, however, that I can not attempt it. As a reader and then writer, I wrote down the quote about maps from "What Children Say" by Gilles Deleuze. I crumpled, somewhat fancifully, in the "Disclaimer" and "Method of Inquiry" my textual ball. When I reopened the quote (by stating it a second time), it had grown more complex, it had new dimensions.

The two readers of Quixote from above were reading even more different three-dimensional forms of the 'same' text than me. Different words arose and some others were hidden. Maybe one reader liked the creased parts while the other liked the parts where it was lease crumpled. Maybe one reader did not try as hard as the next to crumple the text. Maybe one reader left the crumpled paper unopened.

I could probably fill this paper alone with a careful analysis of the difference between the 'first' and 'second' Deleuze quote. This is one of the possible paths that this paper could have taken. However, one, this would be very difficult, time-consuming, and complex, and two, I am interested in maps. And in general, maps do not retain the same "text" over and over again like our quote from Deleuze or the text written by both Cervantes and Menard. I want, then, to see how this quote changes when placed alongside another quote: how maps displace other maps.

I will crumple up the quote above and the quote I am about to introduce below; smash them together; open the papers up; look at the crevasses; re-crumple the two together; smash them to against a third, crumpled quote and repeat the process (until I have four quotes smashed together and opened up).

I owe a debt of gratitude to the work of Manuel De Landa. In many ways, the method of inquiry that I am attempting has remarkable similarities to the findings of De Landa in his book A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. In this book, he describes all human interactions, and all biologic and even geologic interactions for that matter, in two movements: meshwork and hierarchy. Meshwork describes the coming together of heterogeneous materials. Hierarchy describes that of homogeneous materials. For De Landa, there is nothing new, but only a constant layering, like sedimentation in geology.

When I crumple these quote together I am performing a meshwork. When these balls of paper combine and press against each other, they leave definite, unique creases (like sediments) on the body of the paper. A complex layering will occur in my paper, one so complex that I am bound to miss following the path of a more exciting crevasse. De Landa theorizes that "human history is the narrative ... of missed opportunities." (5) I invite you, therefore, to explore any potentially more exciting paths that I most certainly will miss.

Maps of Continual Displacements

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the Entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that the vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

--Jorge Luis Borges, "On Exactitude in Science," (6)

Standing alone, the above story by Borges (this is the whole story) first marvels at the map-making prowess of these particular "Cartographers Guilds" and then laments over the lost interest over the Map(s) by following generations. It very simply, yet eloquently, describes maps that were made to such a large scale that they filled entire cities and provinces. The story is called "On the Exactitude in Science" and the word exactitude must be highlighted. There is an obsession with detail so obscene that a particular cataloguing of the Empire of enormous magnitude takes place. The inhabitants of this empire, initially, are under the mindset that the more that can be observed and written down, the better off they will be. Later, this mindset changes; the detailed workings of the elder generations is ignored, neglected and ultimately end up as memories of a past time, as "Tattered Ruins." There appears to be a decidedly melancholy tone. There is an inherent grief that resides in the narrator's voice. Why do the young forget the traditions of the old, the narrator asks. The whole world has changed, the narrator seems to say, yet I still love maps.

Here is one paper ball. This is the 'origin,' 'truth' of this one "map." We have to put it aside for a brief moment while we retroactively crumple up the Deleuze quote, in order to throw the two at each other, in order to superimpose the two "maps" and evaluate the displacement.

As I understand Gilles Deleuze, maps are not concerned with history, but change. Deleuze posits that maps do not look back and are not tools for examining the past. We can learn something from the past, however. Though the only way to do this is to look at the present and note the differences. These differences mark paths that were taken. Rather than focusing on where these paths started from, Deleuze seems to suggest that it is more important to examine the fact that these paths are indeed going somewhere, that there is a trajectory being followed, that maps are in a virtual state of becoming.

Let us open up the two maps and superimpose Borges' on to Deleuze's map. How will Borges' map change? With Borges' map on top of Deleuze's map, does Borges' map now look different? Let us evaluate the displacement.

Keeping Deleuze in mind, the Borges story becomes quite different. What if the narrator, instead of sympathy for the "Art of Cartography," looks upon the art with disdain? Reading the story a second time with this mindset brings out subtleties in the text; the text becomes richer. Deleuze dislikes what is set in stone; a rhizome is desirable. How interesting is it, then, that all of the nouns are capitalized? I am reminded of Michel Foucault's analysis of Belgian painter, Rene Magritte's painting, "This is not a pipe." After deconstructing the painting, and splintering the meaning seven ways, Foucault remarks, "Magritte names his paintings in order to focus attention upon the very act of naming." (7) In the same way, the narrator capitalizes the nouns in order to focus attention upon the very act of naming, or capitalizing, upon the act of attaching a permanence, an ideal to the noun. Is this not the same thing that the Cartographers Guilds did? Did they not seek to attach a permanence to the land by replicating it to tremendous degrees? Did they not want to lock away the real with a symbol (e.g., a name or a map)? Does the narrator want to perform the same "tracing," to use the same word as Deleuze, as the Cartographers? Or is the narrator's excessive use of capitalization mocking the art?

Thinking about the story with Deleuze's maps underneath, I tend to view the latter hypothesis as on target. Though the story begins purporting maps as that which is a tracing of reality, a resemblance, we cannot forget the ultimate fate of the maps. When the maps were obsessed over, when the guilds spent so much time trying to make the maps copies of the land, the maps were nothing but mere resemblances, mere tracings. But only when the maps were forgotten about--when the maps were not trying to be maps--they became part of the land, they followed the same trajectory as the earth. The maps finally became-maps.

I label this section "maps of continual displacements" not in respect to the fallen maps and not out of the disgust for cartography possibly felt by the narrator. I understand maps of continual displacements to be maps that only function as Deleuzean maps. A map need not be drawn on a piece of paper, but record the passage of change, record a path taken. And the word "continual" is what is most important here. There is no state, stage, or period (again, I am relying on the theories set forward by De Landa), there is a continual layering of change, displacement. Maps engage "different routes of development." (8) Maps, like the very land the Borges' map has become, are rhizomes. A rhizome is a body, a nonlocalizable mass, an indefinite concept, an indefinable collage, an infinite warehouse of possibility. A map, though seemingly a static structure, is a temporary freeze-frame of the inevitable evolution that will not let a map be held in place. Its lack of motion only makes it more obvious that there is movement that has no idea where it is going. All that maps record is trajectory without "foresight." (9)

Non-human Becomings

For Opicinus the arrangement of pubic hair on his body signifies the arrangement of vineyards over the whole European continent. His farts and constipations warn of troubles in 'the belly of Europe' and a rheumatic pain in his arm which prevents him touching his shoulder means the failure of a planned German attack against France. He does not recognise where he ends and the universe outside begins.

Michael Camille (10)

Opicinus de Canistris would be considered insane today. In the 14th Century, this Italian priest described himself, however, as falling sick. Opicinus took it upon himself to map out his illness, map out the changes in his body and health. In the quote above we get a picture of a man who perceives no difference between the body and a social body, or the body and a body of land. What is wrong with Opicinus? Is it a problem with his perceptions? Was he delusional? Did he have a sixth sense that no one else possessed, ever? Let us smash this tight paper ball against our map that records trajectories without foresight.

Maybe I should give Opicinus the credit for the method of inquiry that I used for this paper. He most certainly read the world by condensing its complexities into a tight definition: the human body, many times his own, mapped the world around him. Within him, the whole world was alive. But Opicinus was not content to keep such a definition so closed. He opened this definition up to new complexities. His maps both complicated and added new elements of meaning to the world around him.

In Borges' story the map itself took the form of the rhizome. This, however, somewhat changes that position. It is not that the map is any less rhizomatic. The map is now an agent. Through the map, Opicinus has the trajectories of two seemingly unrelated objects become one. The land is becoming-human and the human is becoming-land. In one of Opicinus' maps, (11) "Europe becomes a crippled man with a huge beard (Spain) and wobbly leg (Italy) who lends his ear to the large profile of a hag representing Africa." (12) This dual becoming is evident. The work of Opicinus, thus, becomes somewhat of a precursor to the work of De Landa. That which is not human functions the same as that which is human, and visa versa. The map therefore is the agent of non-human becomings. It plays an active role, providing an indefinable space for displacements to be drawn. There is a fluid mixture of art, cartography and science whose parts are just as uncertain as the fluid mixture of body and land.

As the conception of what it is to be human changes, so too does the conception of what it is to be a map. In his map above, Opicinus at least makes an attempt to keep the physical form of Europe and Africa, however becoming-human it might be. In another map by Opicinus, the traditional "map" is unrecognizable. (13) We see an black woman, who represents Africa, making love with a white man, who represents Europe. This couple replaces the internal organs of Opicinus, himself. There is no line between land, body, himself and his maps. The elements come together to form, not something we can call a map, but simply a meshwork. It is impossible to tell what form his next map will take, for that depends on his body. There are bound to be displacements, but they are undoubtedly unforeseeable.

Our new conception of a map has changed quite significantly since superimposing the work of Opicinus de Canistris over the combined ball of Deleuze and Borges. Before we introduced Opicinus, a map was another name for a rhizome. A map was the structure from which anything could spring, it became the land itself. After the work of Opicinus rubbed its crevassed body against the creased conglomerate of Deleuze and Borges, maps are now meshworks, collages, that become the agents for rhizomaticity. A map is now characterized by its ability to produce a non-human becoming. And although the map of Borges certainly became-non-human (i.e., the map became-land), the map itself did not start as a human. It left its stasis to become part of the land, to become something which embodies continual change and evolution. The map of Opicinus produces a hybrid trajectory. It is the agent of simultaneously human and non-human becomings that are so complex that their separate trajectories become inseparable. Opicinus' apparent insanity opens up new possibilities of what it means to be human, or the land, or a map. By ignoring physical boundaries, hybrid people, lands and maps emerge, living together, working off of each other, and not defining anything. Maps (through series of displacements) map hybridity.

Bodies that are Tied to the Land

And though there is no water in that sea, yet there is a great plenty of good fish caught on its shores; they are very tasty to eat, but they are of different shape to the fish in other waters. I, John Mandeville, ate of them, and so believe it, for it is true.

--The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (14)

Introducing our final quote, we encounter John Mandeville, the meant-to-be-real, but in actuality fictitious author-traveler, who, for countless Europeans in the "Middle Ages" (the book was written in 1356), brought the East to the West in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. "John Mandeville" gained the trust of 'his' audience soley through his personality. At every turn of the book, Mandeville makes the reader feels as though he or she is gaining access to a place previously off limits. Because we know John Mandeville, the reader senses, we have this same access. Mandeville stresses how real of a person he is, constantly saying that he, himself, personally experienced what he is describing (e.g., "I, John Mandeville, ate of them, and so believe it, for it is true"). Mandeville focuses on the consumption of food to raise his credibility. The joy of eating is an immensely human activity, especially describing the experience of eating. Everyone can remember a time when they ate a new food. Very few people can relate to meeting the ruler of a far off land. So while it was necessary for Mandeville to describe these far off rulers (sultans and khans), they only become believable once we could believe the narrator. By Mandeville being utterly "human," talking to us as a friend would talk to us, and inviting us into secret places where only the privileged have access, we trust Mandeville and his travels become credible. This credibility was vital, for the people of the Middle Ages just suffered the trauma of losing all of the land initially won in the Crusades. Just like Mandeville consumed his food, the readers of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville had to consume his words. This was the only their only access to the East, a land that, now that the Crusades failed, seemed inaccessible.

What does this have to do with maps? Before we superimpose this over all of the creases that we previously revealed, let me just note how the world was conceived during the time of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. And since this is a travel journal, and travel is described, the map--the structure of the book--plays quite an important role. The general map of the day was a "T in O" map. (15) The map places Jerusalem, the center of the Crusades, at the center of the world. Asia is above Europe (bottom left) and Africa (bottom right). This was the orientation of the Western World at the time.

We are now ready for our final layering. Thinking about what we have thus far discovered, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was a map. The Travels worked exactly as this paper works, exactly as this method of inquiry that I am purporting. The Mandeville Author began with a blank T in O map as above. When this author crumpled it up and opened it again, he or she revealed a complex world of crevasses, peaks and valleys. For the contemporary reader, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville performed a wrinkling of foreign worlds. What was once a flat, geometric map, became a world in which a trusted, three-dimensional friend (i.e., John Mandeville) could flush shape, sights, smells, sounds, textures, and most especially, tastes, out of a world that existed only as Other, foreign and something that made up in dreams. The Travels illuminated the difference in preconceived notions and personal experience, and flat and round.

The importance placed on consumption utterly tied John Mandeville to the land. Without the land and Mandeville's interaction with it, Mandeville as credible reporter, would not exist. And without a credible Mandeville, The Travels would not exist either. It has been theorized that the Mandeville Author probably never left Europe, if not his or her local library. Thus we have a hybrid text--a text grounded so firmly in a land never reached, a text where imagination and fact are inseparable, where bodies, possibilities and desires come together. Rather than a map that maps hybridity, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is a hybrid map that maps, or causes mapping to occur. The distinction may be subtle. Opicinus' maps track the hybrid human/non-human becoming of one man and his milieu in a hybrid manner. The map that is The Travels caused others to map for themselves. One map spawned innumerable map becomings.

Possible Paths

I have written this paper in the order that I encountered all of the above quotes. This produced what you have just read. Had I in fact encountered these quotes even in a different order, this paper would have been entirely different. As I wrote in the beginning of this paper, this is only one possible path that this paper might have taken. What if I had introduced a quote by Diane Bell in her book Ngarrinddjeri: Wurruqarrin: a world that is, was, and will be, if a quote that brought up the mapping of female bodies onto the land? Would the map the I have created look different if I discussed the damage that the land and Aboriginal women shared? Of course. The paper could have turned at any point. The rhizome could have been traversed at any angle, direction, and at any speed. If I had introduced the above idea, the paper might have become one of gendered bodies and gendered lands.

I am not sure whether or not I have successfully demonstrated a Scientific Method in this paper. I am leaning towards a no. But the paper did seem, however, to function like a Deleuzean map. Whether or not this is a valuable method of inquiry is not up to me, though. I personally found that it was.

By the end of this paper, it appeared as though that maps, hybridity and rhizomes a practically interchangeable words. But until more work is done on this intersection, I hesitate to say that they are. As I wrote at the beginning of this paper, I invite others to experiment with this method of inquiry. I hope that this method is as susceptible to fluid displacements as was the maps that were presented in this paper. A running dialogue has been desired in the field of academia since the time of Socrates. Hopefully this method of inquiry will enable us to further enter this all-important rhizome.

Michael Y. Bennett, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

(1) Gilles Deleuze, "What Children Say," Essays: Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 63.

(2) "Experiment," Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

(3) See footnote 1.

(4) Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 88-95.

(5) Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Swerve Editions, 1997), p. 99.

(6) Jorge Luis Borges, "On Exactitude in Science," Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 325.

(7) Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, trans. James Harkness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 36.

(8) De Landa, p. 99.

(9) Ibid., p. 139.

(10) Michael Camille, "The Image and the Self: Unwriting late Medieval Bodies," Framing Medieval Bodies, eds. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 88.

(11) Ibid., p. 91.

(12) Ibid., p. 90.

(13) Ibid., p. 93.

(14) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C. W. R. D. Moseley (London: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 169.

(15) For a good example of a "T in O" map, see "T-O map," Decameron Web, accessed 14 January 2005, http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/images/ maps/decworld/205U.jpg.