Untitled Haiku

A sweater’s loose thread,

Snipped to stop an unspooling.

In heaps after wash.

A sweater is like a Deleuzean/Guttarian rhizomic structure. Its numerous threads (roots) are woven tightly, yet the intricacy is often unseen (underground). I found the image of a sweater’s loose thread a logical correlative to the “offshoots” (D/G 1458) of a rhizome because it gives external evidence to the unseen intricacy of the system. Plucking a weed from a rhizomic structure will not destroy the roots below the surface. Snipping a loose thread from a sweater will not destroy its threads.

The image of course is imperfect. Unlike the rhizome, a sweater has “localizable linkages between points and positions” (D/G 1458). Because the sweater's threads are so interconnected, snipping the loose thread therefore reduces the sweater to heaps after it is washed. Because the rhizome is a living, organic thing, it could actively respond to alterations in its intricate structure. A sweater, of course, could not do this.

But despite the interruption of the sweater's structural integrity, the threads themselves still remain in tact after being washed. The threads can therefore serve as materials for postmodern “rebuilding” (Lyotard 1466). A new sweater can be created from the heaps of unravelled thread (a postmodern sweater I'm sure Lyotard would love to wear).

I chose the image of the sweater, despite its imperfections, because I believe it addresses both a Deleuzean/Guttarian and Lyotardian understanding of postmodernism in a single image. If the explanation I've given has not done enough to address the discrepancy of the organic rhizome vs. inorganic sweater, I put the haiku in green font. You can't get much more organic than that.