Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

with each other. It is both an organic and inorganic continuum, animal

and machinic, mental and electronic. One event does not approach

another one through logical reasoning, nor through historical con-

sequentiality, or through dialectical attraction-repulsion.

There is no necessary consequentiality in juxtaposing one event with

another, nor any implicit logic in juxtaposing one sign with the next,

nor any necessity for isomorphism between a composition and the

world.

In any composition there is only the pleasure of the conjunction, me

and you, this and that, the wasp and the orchid. The part is not com-

pleted thanks to conjunction with the part, nor does placing one next

to the other cause any totality to arise. The conjunction is the pleasure

of becoming other. From this arises the adventure of knowing, the

adventure of erotic pleasure and of artistic creation.

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle,

between things, interbeing, intermezzo.The tree is filiation, but the

rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb ‘to

be’, but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and ... and ...

and ...’. This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot

the verb ‘to be’. ... To establish a logic of the AND, overthrow onto-

logy, do away with foundations, nullify endings and beginnings.

(Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 25)

There is nothing other than conjunctions, conjunctions of signs and

corpuscles.

Signs acquire meaning in conjunctions and corpuscles acquire form

through conjunctions. One mode of conjunction is sense, and another

mode is pleasure.

Art seeks its contact point in sense and pleasure.

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