Deleuze and Guattari
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Deleuze and Guattari’s and explain a concept in which freedom from identity and definition of being are acquired by understanding nature in a different way from the norm. In the traditionally accepted belief of nature, features or characteristics of a living thing are inherited down a linear line of filiation and those features and characteristic make up the essence of every living thing. That is how living things come to be what they are. This view of nature puts blinders on society as society looks down the arborescent pathway of evolution and inheritance leading to a defined being. Deleuze and Guattari’s view of nature opens up endless dimensions of each living thing and because the dimensions are endless and continuously opening up new pathways, Deleuze an Guatari say a living thing is not a given being but a multiplicity of a becoming. These multiplicities are things such as contagion, affiliation and epidemic. As human beings we cannot begin to understand this concept of nature until we let go of our arborescent way of thinking and adopt a rhizomatic one. In doing so means to see we are not living things shaped by one event that leads to the next but we are a collective plane of random events that are all interconnected.
At first the ideas of Deleuze and Guatarri seemed absurd to me. How could living things be said to be anything besides what evolution has lead them to become? How could living things not be related by there similar characteristics? It was not until I read Deleuze and Guatarri’s chapter “Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming Imperceptible” that I questioned why we are classified by our physical features and why these were the things chosen to give us an identity. Deleuze and Guatarr’s concept of nature made me realize our physical features have no significance to our true being and we can not even be defined as a being, as a being would be something that is one dimensional and is made up of fixed aspects. I agree with Deleuze and Gutarri’s concept of nature and agree that our interactions with all other things in the world are the only thing that give living things a unique significance. Inherited characteristics are gained through a chain of evolution and essentially came from the same source, so how could these characteristics be used to separate us into different categories or living things? If anything wouldn’t these characteristics be used to explain how all living things are connected not differentiated from one another? If it were not for different interactions living things had in the first place, that caused them to evolve, all living things would be physically the same. Physical differences are only a product of the interactions a living thing has with the world. A bird does not gain it’s shape of beak simply because it was passed on by heredity but a bird gains it shape of beak because of the multiple interactions it’s ancestors had with their environment’s food source.
If we can see heredity and filiation as nothing more of a passing of our linked inherited traits we can see how interactions trump any physical aspect of a living thing in giving it meaning and differentiation from other living things. Interactions such as contagion and epidemic cause for much a greater difference in living things than filiation and inheritance. Deleuze and Gutarri give examples of the vampire and the virus. You can have two humans from the most contrasting hereditary backgrounds and they will still have all the same potential of a human being, but a human that experiences the contagious bite of a vampire is transformed in it’s being and has a whole new realm of possible potential. You can also have a child that has half of the genetic makeup of each parent by filiation. Each of the cells in the child are the same as every other healthy humans cells. It is not until an epidemic reaches the cells that the cells of that child become differentiated from any other normal cell. When a cancer cell develops it is spread by epidemic and then those transformed cells completely change and effect the potential of the living body they are in.
Another example of interactions making up a living thing opposed to genetic inheritance making up a living thing, are pack animals. If you take away a pack animal such as a wolf from it’s pack it will not be the same being. What defines a wolfs being is not it’s large canine build or sharp teeth but it’s interactions with it’s other pack members and how it affiliates itself with those pack members. Wolves and domestic dogs both come from a very similar hereditary background. A wolf and a large dog both physically have about the same potential, but society sees them as two very different beings. A wolf as a ferocious predator and a dog as a friendly companion. There only true differences come from there differences in their interactions and affiliations. A wolf mainly associates itself with other wolves, it’s pack. A wolf is a wild animal that knows little about human interaction. In contrast domesticated dogs are a product of human interaction. These interactions determine the wolf from dog.
The other concept of Deleuze and Gutarri I support is that all living things are