Weeding rhizomes: the Deleuzian approach to climate change
By Bradley Rink
Have you ever tried to rid a garden of rhizomes? It is a challenging and frustrating process that perplexes the home gardener. Cut off a shoot here, and another emerges there. Just when you thought the solution is in order, another problem is created, because just beneath the soil lurk countless opportunies for mischief and uncertainty. If you have ever attempted it, you might think of it as a ‘wicked’ problem (Rittel & Webber 1973); one that evades simplistic responses while also creating new, often unforeseen challenges along the way. Wicked problems are ‘tricky’, ‘aggressive’—perhaps even ‘malignant’ (Rittel & Webber 1973, 160).
Climate change is one of the most wicked problems of our day, presenting scientists, engineers and policy makers amongst others with a wicked problem of a more serious nature that is now considered ‘super wicked’ (Levin et al 2012). This super wicked problem is complicated by urgency, powerlessness and lack of foresight on the part of those with the power of change.
So what can the pesky rhizome tell us about climate change? And how might we approach its resolution in the manner of the gardener?
Firstly, a rhizome is driven by ‘connection’. As Deleuze & Guattari (1987) tell us, “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 7). The problems surrounding climate change thus grow as they connect to and affect each other. So we need to understand the ways in which connection happens;
Second, a rhizome “…may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines” (1987, 9). Thus we must anticipate future effects of climate change through modeling and forecasting. We must stay one step ahead;
And finally, possibly one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways and exits (1987, 12). Therefore we must look to the past and forward to the future in order to understand the approach to climate change problems.
How, then, should our collective ‘weeding’ be operationalized? The key lies in an interdisciplinary approach: a range of gardeners in a variety of locations around the garden, performing multiple, interrelated tasks to approach the problem. We can, and do call this approach ‘interdisciplinarity’, which may be defined as a “process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession” (Klein & Newell 1998: 3).
The challenge of combating climate change may be super-wicked, but the opportunities for knowledge production and solution-forming are many. Assemble the team. The garden is already overgrown.
References
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Brian Massumi, Trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Klein, J. & Newell, W. (1998). Advancing Interdisciplinary Studies. In W. Newell (ed), pp. 3-22, Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature, New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
Levin, K., Cashore, B., Bernstein, S., & Auld, G. (2012). Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change. Policy Sciences, 45(2), 123-152.
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2),155–169.
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