So. A rhizome. Not the rhizome, but some rhizome. Some rhizome, photographed somewhere. Some picture lifted without qualm from some website whose creator doubtless will never discover the reproduction of her content, here. Although, “without qualm” isn’t quite right, for I do feel some kind of inner stirring, staring at this image. Only the disturbance has nothing to do with any copyright infraction, but rather, with the wrenching, almost pornographic, power of the picture itself. To look at a rhizome is to look at something which ought not to exist.
Deleuze doubtless discusses, somewhere in A Thousand Plateaus, this sense of repugnance, this subconscious aversion to the very form of the rhizome, which echoes, I imagine, the sort of attenuated power to disturb which we moderns can only just detect in the ancient myths of multi-animal hybrids: the sphinx, the minotaur, Skylla, etc. Such at least is my own, initial, impression. An impression, too, of an estatic vegetable sexuality, which typically we do not find ourselves confronted with when regarding plant life. “Flora’s a freak!” might be a fitting caption.
