Deleuze and Guattari’s contributions to a rhizomatic perspective of organizations

Abstract

This theoretical essay presents the organization from a rhizomatic perspective of study, using the theoretical conceptions proposed by Deleuze and Guattari to expand the possibilities of organization studies. A rhizomatic perspective highlights a multiplicity of ways of thinking about the organization, expressing and not denying the power that constitutes it. This essay seeks to continue the theoretical efforts proposed to overcome the construction of organizational theory marked by functionalism, a characteristic of a modern organization that hinders the proliferation of new study perspectives. Therefore, the rhizomatic perspective on organizations follows an organization-rhizome becoming, composed of lines that may appear as segmentation (organization, classification), or appear as lines breaking into lines of flight (of a transformation of multiplicity). Therefore, the rhizomatic organization presents itself as a subversive form of the organization.

Keywords:
Organization Theory; Deleuze and Guattari; Multiplicity; Rhizomatic Organization

Resumo

Este ensaio teórico teve como objetivo apresentar a organização a partir de uma perspectiva rizomática de estudo, fazendo uso das concepções teóricas propostas por Deleuze e Guattari, como forma de expandir as possibilidades de estudo das organizações. Uma perspectiva rizomática destaca uma multiplicidade de formas de pensar a organização, expressando e não negando a potência que a constitui. Essa proposta busca dar continuidade aos esforços teóricos que se propõem a superar a construção da teorização organizacional marcada pelo funcionalismo, característico da organização moderna e que dificulta a proliferação de novas perspectivas de estudo. Portanto, a organização entendida a partir de uma perspectiva rizomática segue um devir organização-rizoma, composto por linhas que em alguns momentos se apresentam como de segmentaridade (organização, classificação). Em outros momentos essas linhas se rompem em linhas de fuga (de transformação da multiplicidade). Ao final, compreendemos que a organização rizomática se apresenta como uma forma subversiva da organização.

Palavras-chave:
Teoria das Organizações; Deleuze e Guattari; Multiplicidade; Organização rizomática

Resumen

Este artículo tuvo como objetivo presentar la organización desde una perspectiva de estudio rizomática, haciendo uso de las concepciones teóricas propuestas por Deleuze y Guattari, como una forma de ampliar las posibilidades de estudio de las organizaciones. Una perspectiva rizomática resalta una multiplicidad de formas de pensar acerca de la organización, expresando y sin negar el poder que la constituye. Esta propuesta busca dar continuidad a los esfuerzos teóricos que se proponen superar la construcción de la teorización organizacional marcada por el funcionalismo, característico de la organización moderna y que dificulta la proliferación de nuevas perspectivas de estudio. Por lo tanto, la organización entendida desde una perspectiva rizomática sigue un devenir organización-rizoma, compuesto de líneas que a veces aparecen como segmentación (organización, clasificación). En otras ocasiones, estas líneas se dividen en líneas de fuga (de transformación de la multiplicidad). Finalmente, entendemos que la organización rizomática se presenta como una forma subversiva de la organización.

Palabras clave:
Teoría de la organización; Deleuze y Guattari; Multiplicidad; Organización rizomática

INTRODUCTION

Organizing is an essentially human practice, which according to Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes (2005) is a reflection of a complexly chaotic world, in which organizing is an action that reduces the complexity of what is real. In this sense, conventional analyses of organizations have concentrated on the organizational perspective as a way to order, structure and control the world. No matter whether it is formal or informal, the organization is imposed as the official institutional repository of truth and moral order (Cooper & Burrell, 1988).

The understanding that has always dominated in organizational theories is the formal-functional organization, which is capable of guiding the rational-instrumental condition of its members. This form of understanding an organization creates a spatial/environmental frontier which distinguishes it from other organizations and other spaces and environments (Cooper, 1990). These concepts and understandings of organizations have been dismantled or questioned in recent years. It did not take long for this frontier to be questioned (Cooper, 1990) as well as other rational (Brunsson, 1982) and formal-functional aspects of organizations (Alvesson & Deetz, 2006).

It is no accident that these studies have expanded our understanding of organizations, making it evident that the concept of the organization cannot be limited to real order, because organization, order and disorder are interdependent, supplementary and parasitical (Clegg, Kornberger & Rhodes, 2005). It is along these lines that Reedy (2014) points out the need to overcome the functionalist conception of formal organization, opening the field of organizational studies to new perspectives, theorizing and studying organizations as products of social contexts.

In seeking to expand organizational analyses, scientific production in the area of Administration has come closer to the contributions of Deleuze and Guattari. Thus, the works of Grisci (2008), Cavalcanti and Alcadipani (2011), Cavalcanti (2016) and Barreto, Carrieri and Romagnoli (2020) have highlighted the possibility that Brazilian organizational studies can expand their analyses using the theories of Deleuze and Guattari. However, these contributions, even though they question the foundations of classic organizational theory, do not theoretically advance an alternative conceptual proposition to formal organization.

In this sense, we have constructed this essay based on the theoretical contributions of Deleuze and Guattari, and we propose a rhizomatic way of understanding the organization, which should be perceived as a movement which does not accept the imposed formalisms. Thus, rhizomatic organization is a space of multiple movements, which is an opening to power and all the creative possibilities that it represents. Even avoiding the traditional meaning of an organization as the opposite of disorder, it does not deny its arborescence (formal aspect) but reinforces the existence of interdisciplinary movements which seek to avoid being organized and use desire to fuel their creations.

We begin our discussion based on the traditional theory of organizational studies, the construction of the concept of an organization and its development, and the openings that scholars have pursued in the field, seeking to expand the comprehension of organizations. Then we will discuss the conceptual body of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory in order to understand the issue of the univocity of being, which is central to the authors. Finally, we will present the rhizomatic perspective applied to organizational studies, which will enable us to understand an organization as a rhizome, promoting an opening of the concept for a field of multiplicities which have previously been closed by arborescent structures of formal organization.

THE OVERALL PANORAMA OF DISCUSSIONS OF ORGANIZATIONS

About organizational theory

The act of organizing is presented as a typically necessary human action, as pointed out by Chia (1999), which makes the world inhabitable. However, as Alcadipani and Rosa (2011) point out, the systematization of organizational theory is something recent, which is linked to technological and social changes which occurred during the second half of the 19^th century. Within this context, Reed (2010, p. 64) presents organizational theory as “a field of historic conflicts in which different languages, approaches and philosophies battle for recognition and acceptance”. The author argues that a theory cannot be analyzed outside of the social and historical context in which it was created and recreated with the objective of disturbing orthodox conventions.

For this reason, to Morgan (1990) organizational studies require new types of theoretical concepts, using different research tools and techniques as well as new criteria to determine the legitimacy and quality of the generated knowledge. The author’s proposal of a variety of paradigms represents being open to new problems and issues which should be addressed by organizational studies, with this being a challenge to the legitimacy of all that is already known about organizations.

The discussion of social paradigms realized by Burrell and Morgan (1979), addresses the constitution of the field of organizational theory. According to Caldas (2005), the authors argue that the functionalist paradigm has limited the comprehension of organizations making it effectively a prison. This paradigm is limited and focused on efficiency, and emphasizes specialization and authority, which are characteristics of modern organizations, to the detriment of differentiation (Cooper, 1990; Cooper & Burrell, 1988). In the functionalist paradigm, organizations are seen as a way to order, structure and control a chaotic world (Clegg, Kornberger & Rhodes, 2005). It is from this concept of the organization that the term formal organization arose (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011).

According to Cooper and Burrell (1988), the term formal organization refers not only to what is appropriate and methodical, but also what is official and is taken to be the truth, assuming the role of moral order. Understanding an organization as formal is following the logic of modern society (Reed, 2010), which is based on industrial organization as a source of unity and progress, where rational subjects are constituted by the system of social functionality (Cooper & Burrell, 1988). The perspective of the modern organization, according to Power (1990), understands individuals as those who perceive themselves as functional entities of organizations, whose purpose is to achieve the highest status possible, validating in this way the functionalist approach to organizations.

Developed as a form of opposition to the modernist model of organization, the post-modernist approaches seek differences, according to Cooper and Burrell (1988), avoiding the determinism of formal organization. In this sense, Power (1990) emphasizes the understanding of the organization as potential instability, as being permeable and not closed, in which analysis is devoted to its frontiers or surfaces. To the author, post-modernist organizational theory requires the researcher to observe diversity and fluidity in organizational life, where ready-made and unified models are not sufficient to guide research.

To Cooper and Burrell (1988) the formal organization’s main characteristic is its desire to annul its opposite. In this sense, conventional analyses seek to create a sense of order demonstrated by the figure of the organization (Clegg, Kornberger & Rhodes, 2005). Ahrne and Brunsson (2011) emphasize the need for studies which seek a broader definition of organization, without an equivalence to formal organization, which makes organizational studies more relevant by addressing broader social science issues. In this manner, Segnini and Alcadipani (2014) state that discussions have led to the understanding of the organization as a phenomenon that involves human, historical and social phenomena.

Following the considerations of Cooper and Burrell (1988), Cooper (1990), Morgan (1990), Power (1990), Ahrne and Brunsson (2011) and Segnini and Alcadipani (2014), there is an evident need to widen the understanding of the organization, with broader definitions which transcend the logic of a formal organization and are capable of instituting instability, the deconstruction of organizational frontiers and a break with the functionalist perspective of organization. To accomplish this, it is necessary to expand the concept of the organization.

Expanding organizations conceptually

Reedy (2014) states that the solution to understanding organizations as phenomena will not occur through analyzing alternative locations of organizations utilizing conventional categories of analysis: it is necessary to expand studies beyond the usual theoretical structures. This author believes that organizational studies need a theoretical structure which is distant from conventional theory to address alternative types of organizations (forgotten and excluded by conventional theories). Reedy (2014) notes that post-structuralist contributions have worked on reformulating the base of organizational theory. According to Peters (2000) and Souza (2012), French post-structuralism represents a transformation in the field of knowledge and is one of the currents of study that integrates the post-modernist movement.

In order to expand discussions related to organizational studies, it is necessary to return to contributions situated in a post-structuralist perspective, keeping in mind the innovative and original aspects of post-structuralism in terms of the development of different forms of analysis (Peters, 2000). According to Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes (2005), post-structuralist organizational theory is instructive in analyzing the way in which desires manifest themselves in practice, through the observation of the functioning of the micro-practices of the primary organization. To the authors, understanding organizations is looking for chaos, noise, paradoxes, and differences. It is understanding that a dynamic exists, a sound which not only reduces complexity, but produces this complexity incessantly. In this way, working with the concept of organization does not deny the existence of disorganization, or state that organization annuls disorder. It is necessary to understand it, as highlighted by Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes (2005), as a dependent, supplementary, and parasitic aspect of order and disorder (organization and disorganization).

Thus, Munro (2001) states that an organization can be understood by investigating disorder, given that to Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes (2005), disorganization is a pre-condition to organization. Viewing organization based on what composes it is reproducing the functionalist point of view of an organization, in which the researcher has to expand the concept by observing what is excluded from this system (Munro, 2001). According to Cooper’s approach (1990), an alternative conception in understanding an organization is treating it as a differential structure, linked to disorganization which can only be organized by an outside force and by the violent exercise of power, which is termed the Zero Degree of an Organization by the author. Zero degree is a state with no specific order, organization or direction, or in other words, it is a process of undecidability which permeates all social organization (Cooper, 1990).

As Linstead and Thanem state (2007), the zero degree of an organization is not the organization properly organized but is rather understood as the potential to be an organization or not. Discussions that seek to question the ontological status of organizations have been developed using theoretical propositions of disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. This denial of frontiers and ready-made packages to understand organizations is the point of departure for the discussion of what we are proposing to accomplish in this essay. To present this, we will present in the next topic the theoretical contributions of Deleuze and Guattari, addressing their main concepts which will provide an overall view of the multiplicity of these authors.

THE MEETING BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF GILES DELEUZE AND THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FÉLIX GUATTARI

Individually Deleuze and Guattari developed their own concepts, with Deleuze working on concepts of difference, repetition and the subject, while Guattari developed the concept of desiring machines (Deleuze, 2008). The meeting of and joint production of Deleuze and Guattari is, according to Dosse (2010, p. 13), a dilemma, it is intellectual production made in common between 1969 and 1991 by subjects “of such different sensibilities and contrasting styles”. Gilles Deleuze was already a recognized philosopher. Félix Guattari, in turn, was a political militant and administrator of the psychiatric clinic of La Borde and addressed the fields of psychoanalysis and the social sciences.

Cavalcanti (2016) notes how difficult it is to understand the philosophic works of Deleuze based on specific concepts and argues that a perspective is needed that looks at the entirety of his work. In terms of their work together, Dosse (2010) argues that one cannot seek to define a paternity of the concepts produced by these authors, which would undervalue the collective agency of enunciation established in this production. In this manner, our proposal is to present an overview of their concepts, pointing out the encounters and advances promoted by these authors.

The production of subjectivity, the machinic unconscious and the univocity of being

The question of the univocity of being is the base of the formulation of Deleuze’s theoretical thinking, and his constructions and conceptual appropriations revolve around the affirmation of this univocity (Machado, 2009). In turn, the studies developed by Guattari (2006) lead to the comprehension of a plural subjectivity produced in individual, collective and institutional instances, promoting the expansion of the understanding of the unconscious. To Guattari (2006), studying the unconscious is opening it up to the existence of subjective factors in current history, in the machinic productions of subjectivity and the ethological and ecological aspects related to human subjectivity. The question of subjectivity has been discussed by Deleuze (1974, 2018), however the encounter with the concept of desiring machines which was being worked on by Guattari (1985, 2006) contributed to the construction of the understanding of the machinic unconscious. As Dosse points out (2010), Deleuze finds in the Guattari’s concept of machines, the possibility of leaving structural thinking.

The term machinic refers to the subject’s state of being non-human, which cannot be understood just through its materiality, and other elements need to be examined which compose the machinic dimensions of subjectivation (Guattari, 2006; Guattari & Rolnik, 1996). In this sense, subjects function like machines according to Deleuze and Guattari (2004), having desire as a motor which moves the production process of subjectivation. According to Lawley (2005), like desiring machines, staff are often organized and are in a constant process of production, which gives rise to a tension between desire and their organization.

The machinic unconscious to Guattari (1985), is similar to the Freudian unconscious, because it does not know denial (of the conscious) which allows us, for example, to be I and the Other at the same time, not as polarized entities, but as machinic processes termed becoming. Becoming is the machinic unconscious which makes us travel through the plateaus of intensity constituted by this becoming. In this manner, the unconscious is not a secret instance of a subject that depends on this subject alone, but rather a tangle of machinic interactions by which we are articulated as are all systems of power and power formations that surround us (Guattari, 1985).

In this sense, subjectivity is not just fabricated by the unconscious in the psychogenetic phases of psychoanalysis, but also in “large social, mass-media, and linguistic machines which cannot be qualified as human” (Guattari, 2006, p. 20). In this way, as highlighted by Guattari and Rolnik (1996), it is a subjectivity of an industrial (machinic) nature which is fabricated, modeled, received, and consumed, looking in this manner at a non-human, pre-personal part of subjectivity (Guattari, 2006). To Deleuze (2013), the key to understanding subjectivation is in the dimension of thinking, which was already discussed by the author in his thesis “Difference and Repetition”, in proposing thought without images in opposition to thought with the dogmatic images of traditional philosophy, which imprison differences.

Deleuze (2018) emphasizes that the image of thought deals with the pre-philosophic and natural understanding of what is thought, which possesses and seeks the truth. In this sense, difference can only be thought of as identical, similar, analogous, and opposite, as “always having a relationship with a conceived identity” in which the difference “becomes the object of representation”, alienating the difference and the repetition of the generalities of representation (Deleuze, 2018, p. 190). In this sense, the author emphasizes the univocity of being, which is not just understood as a unique meaning, which would lead us to a homogenization of difference. Rather he speaks of being as one which to Deleuze (2018, p. 68) is saying a unique meaning of all individual differences (entities or intrinsic modalities), given that “being is the same for all of these modalities, but these modalities are not all the same.

Deleuze (2018) refers to three moments in the history of modern philosophy to elaborate his understanding of the univocity of being. First is Duns Scotus, who in his pure ontology, thinks of the univocity of being as neutral/indifferent. Second, there is Spinoza, who makes univocal beings objects of expressive affirmation (expressive affirmative propositions). Third, he refers to Nietzsche’s meaning of the eternal return, which would be the common being of all differences, or his own univocity in which “the being says in the same sense, but this sense is that of the eternal return, like a return or repetition of what he has said” (Deleuze, 2018, p. 69).

As Spinks points out (2010), Deleuze’s use of the eternal return highlights the existence of differences which constitute subjects and things. Difference to Deleuze (2013, 2018) is an affirmative treatment of singular characteristics, emphasizing in this way the pluralism of these differences, which are free, wild, and untamed, and persist in the face of simplifications of frontiers and opposition (Deleuze, 2018). Thus, the understanding of the machinic unconscious is the design of the author’s wild differences, which do not need to be justified by a dogmatic image of what is the truth, because thought without image is the genesis of the act of thinking itself.

Looking for difference means understanding the nature of the world as it is conceived, given that each aspect of reality demonstrates the differences that do not need to be based on any other aspects, because they refer to particular and singular characteristics of each individual, moment, object and perception (Deleuze, 2018; Stagoll, 2010). When Deleuze (2018) deals with the essence of difference and its capacity to represent power, it becomes obvious that generalities are impossible, given that differences constitute these machinic subjectivities (Guattari, 2006; Guattari & Rolnik, 1996) make up thought without image, thought that is born from thinking and not representation (Deleuze, 2018). Thus, repetition highlights the existence of a singularity that cannot be exchanged or substituted (Deleuze, 2018), which metamorphosizes every instant, finds new paths, follows new flows, and which is fueled by desire in its production.

In this sense, repeating, to Deleuze (2018), is a behavior related to something that is unique or singular in each subject, without a similarity or equivalent, which can be the expression of something secret, an inner and deeper repetition in the singularity that houses it. Instead of the generality of the particular, we have the universality of the singular, like a transgression, the “singularity against the general”, with the proposition of denouncing the nominal and general nature of the law, defending a “more profound and artistic reality” based on the singularities of the subject, or what makes the individual different (Deleuze, 2018, p. 18).

The fold, linking thinking and being

Thought, to Deleuze (2013, 2008), is one of the dimensions that makes up subjectivities (power, knowledge and thought) and it is a dimension which is external to the subject, or in other words, that which comes from outside and remains outside, but thought arises at the same time from the inside, like that which does not and cannot think, the unthought. This is not in line with the philosophical understanding of thought as a natural exercise, which inclines toward the truth following the “direct nature of thought” (Deleuze, 2018, p. 181). To the author, thought comes from what is intense, from an awareness that leads us to think or that which is not yet thought, what makes up thought without image.

In this way, ideas to Deleuze (2018) are multiplicities which refer to the differential present in thought. In this point of the author’s reflection, we can identify the basis for the proposition of the concept of the rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 2017a) as the experimentation of these multiplicities which Deleuze (2018) relates to the production of thought. If thought without images is the freedom of difference, this freedom is achieved through learning, and unlike knowledge (the empirical figure of results and experiences), learning is the transcendental structure of thought, or in other words, what still has yet to be thought.

To Deleuze (2013) the unthought corresponds to the outside (external to the subject), which does not have form, a space of action for forces, which is open to a multiplicity of possible relationships. Thus, the process of producing a thought without image critiques the typical understanding of subjectivity as simple internality or externality (O’Sullivan, 2010). In this way, Deleuze (2013) demonstrates through the concept of the fold, the dynamic which constitutes thought as a process in a constant state of transformation. To the author, the fold is the reduplication of the other, of the differences that constitute the outside. This reduplication (of the external - the outside) is not a representation of myself but is rather the presence of the other within me.

In this sense, the machinic subjectivation of Guattari (2006) is realized by the fold which, according to Deleuze (2013, p. 112), presents four modalities: the first refers to the material part of ourselves, here represented by desire; the second deals with the relationships between forces; the third is the fold of knowledge that links truth with being and being with truth; and the fourth fold is the outside “is that which the subject hopes for, in various ways, immortality or eternity, salvation, freedom, death and detachment”. Pick (2017) points out that the concept of the fold is related to the interaction between form and force, representing a point of inflection where variation occurs.

Form to Deleuze (2013) consists of the externalities represented by extracts (historic formations) which represents the domain of knowledge, determined by sight and speech (the visible and the enunciable). On this point, the author highlights the difference between externalities, which refers to forms (seeing and speaking) and the outside. To Deleuze (2013, p. 126) “thinking is folding, it is duplicating what is outside with an inside that coextends with it”, the inside exists when a frontier or an outside fold is defined. When the outside folds it creates an inside (Badiou, 1997). In this sense, Deleuze (2013) understands the fold as a memory or an outside memory, which in turn is an opening to the future, which lives in constant metamorphosis. As presented by Badiou (1997), the fold can be understood as a creation in and of itself (a subject) based on the understanding that this subject results from an outside operation, which is not autonomous or spontaneous. In this sense, thought is the ontological participant of the power of the one, which in this form is the fold of being (Badiou, 1997), thus the one to Deleuze (2018) is a multiplicity.

The Rhizome as a space of multiplicities

Rhizome is the term that Deleuze and Guattari (2017a) borrow from botany and it represents secondary roots, which in leaving the main root, create a multiplicity of paths or points, altering the initial aspect of the secondary root, with it no longer being a single root (linking one point to another), but a root which links the origin with many others, which transform themselves or give way to other roots. The rhizome represents the experimentation of these multiplicities. Colebrook (2002) points out that the term rhizome to Deleuze and Guattari represents that which is random, that proliferates with decentralized connections, which is different from the term arborescent which follows an order and a distinct direction.

The rhizome represents, to the theoretical construction of Deleuze and Guattari, a way of mapping a process without creating hierarchies, but considering network, relational and transversal thinking, which should not be seen as fixed (Colman, 2010). The rhizome in Colman’s description (2010) is a mobile matrix, composed of organic and non-organic parts, which form the symbiotic and parallel in as yet undetermined routes. Deleuze and Guattari (2017b) treat the rhizome as a molecular formation which traces a plan which does not have dimensions, which constitutes a multiplicity which is not subordinated to the one and is free in its movements to act on the plane of immanence.

To Deleuze and Guattari (2017a, 2015), the rhizome is composed of lines of segmentarity and lines of flight, not points and positions as can be found in a tree. Thus, to the authors, the lines of segmentarity treat stratifications, definitions, and categorizations and may be flexible (resulting in multiplicities) or hard (depending on large machines of direct binarization), while the flight lines represent ruptures, in which multiplicity metamorphosizes. In this way, the rhizome is movement, rupture, a break with lines of segmentarity through lines of flight, but these lines of flight can also be reorganized again in new arrangements reconstituting the subject (Deleuze & Guattari, 2017a).

Deleuze and Guattari (2017b) emphasize that rhizomes as well as the arborescent system are constituted by strata and agencies. Strata are, according to Deleuze’s description (2013, p. 57) “historic, positive or empirical formations”, formed by things and words, by what is seen and said. Agencies, on the other hand, are arrangements of organization and construction, which create forms of functioning or new territories (Livesey, 2010).

Deleuze and Guattari (2017b) observe that agencies occur through desire, and do not have a natural or spontaneous determination, but are affected by agency and are continually exercising agency. Therefore, to the authors agencies are a group of singularities and traces extracted from the flow, which are selected, organized and stratified, converging naturally or artificially, presenting themselves as an invention. Analyzing agencies is analyzing the territory that involves them, performing agency is making something your own, like “my house”, “my work”, or “my friend”. In this way, agencies extract fragments from media and give them new meanings (ritornellos) in a constant development of becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 2017b, 2017c).

In this sense, Deleuze and Guattari (2017a, p. 38) relate the rhizome to a scheme of thinking which we presented in the previous topic, and to the authors “the rhizome is the product of the unconscious”. The multiplicities that run along the rhizome depict the formations of subjectivities, machinic constructions of the unconscious, the power that constructs thought outside of the subject which will be folded to create a memory of outside power acting on strata fueled by desire and promoting new agencies.

However, Deleuze and Guattari (2017a) highlight that the rhizome can be closed and arborified, where the rhizome no longer moves or produces. The outside forces which act on strata through folds are hardened by significant powers and subjective affects. They form, to Rolnik (2018), a new fold in which drive (desire) is related to the construction of new worlds based on the designs of a colonial-capitalistic regime and is no longer driven by the demands of their own desires which seek to preserve life.

In this way, we should not understand the rhizome in a binary manner, as being contrary to arborescence, in the same way that power constituted on the field of immanence should not be seen as something that just creates new worlds and follows the demands of desire to maintain life. Deleuze and Guattari (2017a) emphasize that there are arboreal structures or roots in rhizomes in the same way that the branch of a tree and the root structure can sprout a rhizome again. There is no opposition of models (rhizomatic and arboreal) “there are nodes of arborescence in rhizomes, rhizomatic shoots in the roots” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2017a, p. 42).

As Deleuze and Guattari (2017a, p. 26) stress that “groups and individuals contain micro-fascisms always waiting to be crystalized”, and breaks operated by lines of flight in rhizomes can reterritorialize lines of hard segmentarity which classifies and organizes drives of desire. In this sense, Guattari (1985)points out that desiring machines also encounter forms of alienation, where the castration of desires is part of the construction of real society.

To Guattari (1985), only a molecular revolution in the sense of the taking over of technical machines by desiring machines would permit an adjustment between desires and scientific technical progress. Deleuze and Guattari (2017a) point out that the rhizome is the key to this takeover operated by subjectivities, creating new worlds, new forms of living, unconsciousness, speech, and desires.

ALONG WHICH PATHS HAS A RHIZOMATIC PERSPECTIVE LED ORGANIZATIONS IN THE PAST AND WHERE MAY IT LEAD THEM IN THE FUTURE?

Organizational scholars have sought different paths to develop organizational theory, and these paths seek an epistemological understanding of organizations more frequented than the ontological (Linstead & Thanem, 2007). This is why the ontological discussions realized by Deleuze and Guattari represent a profitable field of study.

The Brazilian productions which utilize the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari do so in various ways, however the only empirical study has been the work of Grisci (2008). The author analyzes, based on the concept of the rhizome, the modes of increasing the potential of control, operated by a technological paradigm and in what way this control affects subjectivity. The study was developed in a Portuguese banking institution. In this work, unprecedented in academic productions in the area of Administration, the author addresses rhizomatic control.

Other works address the theoretical perspective of just Deleuze, such as Cavalcanti and Alcadipani (2011), who propose a post-structuralist critique, relating discussions of Deleuze with the contributions of Foucault. In this way, the authors highlight the pragmatism present in the theoretical thought of Deleuze and Foucault as a way of clarifying misunderstanding present in post-structuralist critiques. In a more recent text, Cavalcanti (2016) points out the possibilities of the intersection between the theorization of Deleuze and operational studies, making it evident that a gap exists, which can be filled in by reflections developed within the context of post-structuralist philosophy. To the author, elements marginalized by the production of dominant knowledge can be investigated by using Deleuzian philosophy.

Another work which uses the theory of Deleuze and Guattari is that of Paes and Borges (2016), who critique the approach to the subject in organizations, presenting the term rhizomatic organization. However, in the development of this essay, the term rhizomatic organization will not be treated in a metaphoric form, as used by these authors, but rather as a proposal for the conceptual expansion of organizational theory based on the thought of Deleuze and Guattari.

As a way of representing the multiplicity of Deleuze-Guattarian theory, Barreto, Carrieri and Romagnoli (2020) propose a double appropriation of the concept of the rhizome, as in the rhizomatic posture of the researcher and as a methodological guide. The authors’ proposition deals with the needs identified in the development of empirical organizational studies, promoting new forms of thinking of organizations and their everyday life.

To Cavalcanti (2016), the isolated use of concepts generates a mistaken understanding of the work of Deleuze. To Sorensen (2005), despite the appearance of the openness of organizational studies to the theoretical production of Deleuze and Guattari, their use has occurred within referential limits already defined by organizational theorists. In this manner, a deterritorialization and negative reterritorialization of Deleuze-Guattarian theory have occurred (Sorensen, 2005), with an accompanying loss of the meaning of the theory elaborated by these authors. Therefore, a proposal to advance organizational theory should promote a deterritorialization of the orthodox, traditional territories of a formal organization as well as its opposition to disorder, so that it can be reterritorialized with the multiplicity contained within the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari (2017a).

In Brazilian articles, the concept of the rhizome has been used as a way to expand the theoretical conception of the organization, as can be observed in: Chia (1999), in discussing changes in organizations; Lawley (2005), who presents it as a proposal for the creation of rhizomatic ontologies; Ball (2005), who uses it in an analysis of the control of staff in organizations; Pick (2017), who uses it in conjunction with the concept of the fold to discuss advances in organizational theory; and Kuronen and Huhtinen (2017), who use the concept in an analysis of the organization of the Islamic State. The cited works, even though they emphasize the rhizome, relate it to other concepts in the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, similar to the proposals of Bougen and Young (2000), Styhre (2002), Thanem (2004), Painter-Morland and Deslandes (2014) and Munro (2016).

In this manner, when we highlight a rhizomatic perspective, we integrally evoke Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of multiplicity in order to understand the organization. Our proposition proceeds from a perspective of the organization as the thought and construction of subjectivity, subject to an intricate dynamic of affects, which can free and create new worlds, as well as imprison the subjectivity operated by a colonial-capitalistic unconscious (Rolnik, 2018).

Thus, the organization as thought without image expresses multiple possibilities of apprehending what is real, and this multiple form of understanding is free of the traditional understanding of the organization as contrary to disorder. Permitted in this manner, the organization is understood as not possessing a fixed location, but rather as being in constant movement, filling in voids and extending itself among other organizations. Thus, the division between organizing and disorganizing, which is part of the classic meaning of an organization is denied by the concepts of the fold and rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari (Pick, 2017), opening up the organization to multiple forms of agency, which even when formalized in strata are constantly operating through lines of flight.

In this sense, Linstead and Thanem (2007) argue that the organization has a double meaning, the formal organization and the engagement of life, which can be understood as observing the movements of rhizome production. Thus, the rhizomatic organization is more than a space of order, formalities and stratification, because it is the experimentation of multiplicity, in which movements of flight are part of the organization. However, using the concept of the rhizome to explain the organization is not denying the existence of arborescence, but rather opening our understanding to the microscopic movement that exists within this arborescence, a desire for life, a fight to be organized as a formal organization, which even though formalized in some lines of segmentarity does not exclude it from the power represented by the outside and is constantly being cut by lines of flight.

Speaking of the rhizomatic organization is opening up the concept of the organization to this multiplicity, understanding that the fuel for its creations, changes and movement is desire. The shape that an organization takes in its stratifications can be perceived by its affects, or in other words, how it affects and is affected by outside forces. However, this becoming-organization should be affected by forces that constitute machinic agencies of industry, economics, information, etc., eclipsing the becoming-organization-rhizome (Paes & Borges, 2016).

What all of these texts about the relationship between organizational theory and the conceptions of Deleuze and Guatarri fail to note is that the rhizomatic organization fights against being organized, and constitutes itself as an indiscipline, seeking dynamicity in its lines. To advance in the theoretical construction of a rhizomatic organization is not accepting hegemonic forms such as truth and moral order in terms of what organizations are. The rhizomatic organization should be seen in the sense that Deleuze (2018) describes in respect to thought, as an organization without an image, without a ready form, as an organization that produces itself every moment and thus does not close itself off from power.

The rhizomatic organization cannot have its actions delimited, it fights against being closed, because similar to the rhizome that dies when it is closed, the organization dies every moment in which it is represented in a statistic. This is because it has no fixed location of action and lives constantly battling with the forces that dictate truths about organizations and their theorizations. The place of the rhizomatic organization is designing itself every moment and moving, being affected by outside forces, which are not the organization, but which fold forming an inside. Despite the forces that move in lines of segmentarity in the direction of the formalization of its practices, forcing arborescence, organizing flows and desires, there is an unpredictable movement of lines of flight which constantly seek to break organizational segmentarities. Through this opposition, it is understood that desires do not passively follow organizational stratification, but follow paths of difference, letting themselves be affected by multiple possibilities of power creation.

CLOSING, BUT NOT FINISHING THIS DISCUSSION, WE WILL PRESENT SOME CONSIDERATIONS

The purpose of this essay is to present a rhizomatic perspective of organizational studies. A rhizomatic perspective of an organization makes possible the conceptual proposition of a rhizomatic organization, which is fluid, and at times assumes form, composing strata and lines of segmentarity, which organize and classify knowledge. At other times, however, it breaks free from the lines that organize and stratify it, producing ruptures that follow flows of desire which are what fuel their production.

However, lines of flight in a rhizomatic organization can be stratified again, producing new strata and perceptions of what the organization is. Confrontation is its symbol, given that it can be perceived by its opposition to the hierarchical (arborescent) system of a formal organization. In this sense, it is constantly affected by outside forces, which act on its production of subjectivity through a constant process of folding the outside, forming an inside which constitutes a new memory of what this organization is, given the power represented by the outside.

From this perspective of looking at an organization as a rhizome, the order/chaos dichotomy is overcome, given that the understanding of frontiers which define these aspects is what imprisons the desiring machine which constitutes the rhizome-organization. However, these prisons, characteristic of a colonial-capitalistic unconscious, cannot put an end to its resistance, because it will continue to resist being limited, hierarchized, and organized.

However, it is from this prison that we need to free the rhizomatic organization. This is because the texts discussed in this essay, which are based on the relationship between organizations and the theory of Deleuze and Guatarri, bring the theoretical conceptions of these authors to the context of organizational theory, reducing them to isolated concepts. It is necessary to take the inverse path, bringing organizational conceptions to the theoretical context of these authors. Why do we still need to support conceptions such as the “formal organization”, even when we do not deny their existence?

It is within this condition of subversion that we need to understand the rhizomatic organization. This will not result in the loss of our object of study, which is the organization, but it will permit a much more integrated understanding of the conditions of today’s society. Even though conceptions of organization which have been reproduced for years are still sustained within the context of organizational theory, they do not enable us to understand the complexity of the processes which tension “organizing” economic, social, and productive activities. One has to understand that these processes of “organizing”, in today’s world of capitalistic societies are rhizomatic. One has to understand that, in the zero degree of the organization, this has always been a rhizomatic organization.

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• [Translated version] Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Sept 2021
• Date of issue
  Jul-Sep 2021

History

• Received
  25 May 2020
• Accepted
  02 Nov 2020