“routes”’.^28 The postmodern theorist, Thomas Docherty, touches on
the relation between Irish poetry and rhizomatics in his investigations
of Medbh McGuckian and Seamus Heaney.^29 While the feminist
philosophers, Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, also discuss the
positive and negative aspects of the rhizome as a metaphor for
feminist deterritorialization.^30
Deleuze and Guattari begin their discussion noting how in ‘a
book, as in everything else, there are lines of articulation or
segmentation, strata, territorialities; but also lines of flight,
movements of deterritorialization and of destratification.’^31 It is
important to acknowledge that Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the
rhizome focuses on metaphorical modes of argument in order to
suggest alternative kinds of philosophy and representation. They
describe the rhizome in the following way:
As an underground stem a rhizome is absolutely distinct from roots and
radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with a root or radicles can be
rhizomorphic in all other respects (the question is whether botany, in its
specificity, is not completely rhizomorphic). Even some animals are rhizo-28 Stuart Hall & Paul du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage,
1996), p.4.
29 Thomas Docherty, ëPostmodern McGuckianí, The Chosen Ground: Essays on
the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed., Neil Corcoran
(Pennsylvania: Dufour, 1992), pp.191ñ208. Discussing the rhizome in relation
to McGuckian, Docherty chooses to view McGuckianís deterritorialization in
terms of postmodernism rather than feminism or the post-colonial. He also
makes a passing reference to the rhizome in the second edition of After Theory
(Edinburgh: University Press, 1996), pp.107ñ111. Later in this edition,
Docherty provides discussion of Seamus Heaneyís poetry loosely in terms of
deterritorialization although not directly making the connection with Deleuze
and Guattari, pp.222ñ225.
30 Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of women in Contemporary
Philosophy, trans., Elizabeth Guild (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Elizabeth Grosz,
ëA Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomaticsí, Deleuze and the Theater
of Philosophy, eds., Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (London:
Routledge, 1994), pp.187ñ213.
31 Gilles Deleuze and FÈlix Guattari, eds, ëThe Rhizomeí, On The Line, (New
York: Semiotext(e), 1983), p.2. Also reproduced in ëIntroduction: Rhizomeí, A
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia (London: Athlone, 1988,
1996), pp.3ñ25.