Rhizome and Remixing

A rhizome is a botanical root, regarded for the unique way in which its roots grow from multiple nodes. Deleuze and Guattari use this word to conceive of an original philosophical rhizome, related to the botanical counterpart in the way it encapsulates multiple options of movement and growth.

 A remix is some kind of media that has been altered from the original creation in some way. This typically encapsulates music, art and literature.

The definitive qualities of a rhizome, or a plateau, which are two of the main analogies employed by Deleuze and Guattari, are that they are the middle of something, as opposed to having a beginning or an end. (Landow, 39) “…semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status. Collective assemblages of enunciation function directly within machinic assemblages;” (Deleuze and Guattari, 7) Deleuze and guattari go so far as to assert that most ever thing is a rhizome, connected in one form or another to something else, as if nature itself were a single rhizome in which everything is dependent on something else: “The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves form rhizomes, as do people, etc.).  (Deleuze and Guattari, 11)

Likewise the remix can be thought of as a machinic assemblage that is derived from a regime that lies on a scale that precedes the remix in originality. The remix is part of a linear model, which defines the world on a scale of infinitely varying degrees of originality.  

“The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings (and there is also an aspect under which animals themselves form rhizomes, as do people, etc.).

The issues in remixing arise from the ethical and legal issues that already have precedence under whatever laws have been in place. This includes free speech and the right to privacy (Ridolfo&Rife, 231)  copyright and orphan works (Ridolfo&Rife, 232) the right to publicity and contracted rights, (Ridolfo&Rife, 234) and fair use (Ridolfo&Rife, 236)  These laws are in place for protecting the interests of those who make the work that’s considered original, inasmuch as it was used to create a remix. The rhizomic aspects inherent to remix are the root(haha) of the ethical and legal basis that sprouted controversy; considering the fact that such legal precedents are in place for the purpose of protecting the proliferation of creativity while preventing the rape of “original” work. To truly understand the meaning of originality, copying, borrowing, stealing, remixing and the wide spectrum of degrees to which creative works are conceived of with the inspiration of other works, there must be a tangible, developed theory to grasp how each individual work can be defined. On this linear spectrum discussed earlier, all work can be considered to fall on some point of this linear spectrum of infinitely varying degrees of originality. Already we see that my previous claim about the rhizomic nature is not longer valid of this theory if one were to employ the linear spectrum with definable endpoints. That being said, the points along this originality spectrum where remix is defined can be considered rhizomic, because they are surrounded by other works defined as either more or less original. At the most original end of the spectrum one could use nature as the most original, under the assumption that it was designed. Even without design, it exists and functions on a complex level, which has no known origin or copied from any other system. Every system and machinic assemblage known all operates within the plain of existence of nature, the dimension we live in, this universe, the known. “To these centered systems, the authors contrast acentered systems, finite networks of automata in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined not by their state at a given moment-such that the local operations are coordinated and the final, global result synchronized without a central agency.” (Deleuze&Guattari, 17) As the spectrum of originality runs along a linear spectrum, the pattern of the rhizome runs in a lemniscate pattern, or circular, to represent the channels and systems that are codependent, that they “do not preexist”.

Citations

1.     Ridolfo, Jim and Marinte Courant Rife. “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetoricla Delivery.” Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom. Ed. Martine Courant Rife, shaun Slattery, and Danielle Nicole De Voss. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor P, 2011. Web. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/copywrite/.

2.     Landow, George P. “Hypertext and Critical Theory.” InHypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology: Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 1997. 33-48.

3.     Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, transl. Brian Massumi. Minneapois: U of Minnesota P, 1987. 3-25, excerpted.