Arborescent is a term used by the French thinkers
Deleuze and
Guattari to characterize thinking marked by insistence on
totalizing principles,
binarism and
dualism. The term, first used in
A Thousand Plateaus (1980) where it was opposed to the
rhizome, comes from the way
genealogy trees are drawn: unidirectional
progress, with no possible retroactivity and continuous binary cuts (thus enforcing a dualist metaphysical conception, criticized by Deleuze). Rhizomes, on the contrary, mark a horizontal and non-hierarchical conception, where anything may be linked to anything else, with no respect whatsoever for specific
species: rhizomes are
heterogeneous links between things that have nothing to do between themselves (for example, Deleuze and Guattari linked together desire and
machines to create the - most surprising - concept of
desiring machines).
Horizontal gene transfer is also an example of rhizomes, opposed to the arborescent
evolutionism theory. Deleuze also criticizes the
Chomsky hierarchy of
formal languages, which he considers a perfect example of arborescent dualistic theory.