Regardless of how Mind Axes fared among readers, it ran on a thin line. It tried bringing dynamism and contexts into something fundamentally typological. Relatively post-structuralist elements were infused but failed to liberate the system beyond the confinements of typology. Most of Mind Axes' authors' views on the system's concepts and typology have greatly altered over time. In fact, the very making of the system resulted in many (including myself) developing a critical overview of typology altogether. So, why is this piece written altogether? It's not easy to specify, desire is a complex ensemble anyway. However, this is gonna be a lot more political than typological.
Typology has some merits in highlighting the character or cognition of someone within a predominant control system. But an obsession with it may only trap one further within captured notions of the self. What this article seeks is to present an escape from typology via the reconceptualized facets of Mind Axes.
Reconceptualizing Laterality and Verticality (Rhizomatic and Arborescent Thoughts)
I had not read the works of Deleuze and Guattari (or either of them individually) back when I described the axes. While the overall description of the axis was worth criticizing, the Deleuzoguattarian elements unintentionally present in it were fascinating. The aspect of boxes within boxes and so on, while utilized in a flawed manner, bore similarities with the concepts of multiplicity and deterritorialization. With verticality seeing the box for what it ought to be seen as, and laterality breaking the box into boxes at molecular levels. The error lay within the emphasis on the internality of this deterritorialization equivalent. The description made the error of viewing the internal and the external as opposing entities instead of something chronically interdependent and dynamic. Still, there were parts of the description that held the potential to reconceptualize the entirety of Mind Axes.
Utilizing these facets in a Deleuzoguattarian light, one could better term the two sides of the axis as Rhizomatic (laterality) and Arborescent (verticality). The original idea of laterality was reminiscent of the concept of molecular revolution, in that it rejected any pre-established criteria, and mainly involved itself in small-scale, molecular liberation, barely amounting to anything concrete. Contexts and fluidity were later brought in to explain how a generally lateral person would have to be vertical for certain processes and vice versa, but even that couldn't do much due to the limits of typology. Therefore, what follows will not recreate an axis out of the ideas, but define them and realize their political potential.
Rhizomatic thought features a decentralized network of nodes, where different ways of arriving at and exiting a node exist. The node doesn't necessarily progress into something specific, allowing progression simultaneously in various directions. A rhizome operates without boundaries, limits, or centers. Rhizomatic thought is devoid of any essence or roots. Instead of tracing thought based on core ideas or principles, it creates assemblages of different ideas, elements, and practices that are fluid and temporary. In easier terms, rhizomatic thought would jump from one idea to a typically unrelated idea without having to build a traditional pathway (tracing the supposed roots of both ideas and finding connections). A nomadic process that grabs pieces from the most deterritorialized spaces and crafts its assemblages with them, instead of building its assemblages with pre-established territories.
Arborescent thought bears the structure of a tree, in that every thought extracts an essence and traces itself towards defined roots. It features a vertical hierarchy, where every node stems from nodes directly above them. The Platonic conception of Idea with a capital I, where exist essential, perfect Forms that transcend above knowledge and reality. The forms are the root and the knowledge is its fruit. Arborescent thought persists in absolutism, principles, dualism, and binarism. An abundance of arborescent thinking leads to a character who understands things in linear, hierarchical structures, adhering to established criteria.
In grounded terms, while rhizomatic thought may intermingle fragments that are typically unrelated, the presuppositions of the arborescent thought would find that illogical, as it may not follow through the so-called essences of these fragments. To the arborescent thought, everything has a specific purpose or essence, and the idea of something manifesting with a purpose different from what's prescribed faces great opposition. In rhizomatic thought, nodes are without any hierarchy or prescriptiveness.
Reconceptualizing Impressionism and Lexicality (Affective and Articulative Expression)
Impressionism and lexicality have manifested in various forms across the various takes on Neurotypology and Mind Axes. Order vs chaos, words vs no words, structure vs immediacy, Dionysus vs Apollo, rationality vs emotion, objectivity vs subjectivity, and so on.
While lexicality is still trickier to summarize, the concept of affects greatly portrays impressionism. Affects are intensities of sensations and feelings that precede emotionality. The former is raw, while the latter territorializes certain affects (i.e.: sadness, happiness, etc.). Realizing and expressing affects in the rawest possible sense is what would constitute an extreme impressionist. It experiences and responds to things in manners that precede the concept of any feeling. It is closely tied to corporeal experiences and the ways affects are felt and expressed through the body.
What differentiates affects and affective expression from articulative expression is that the former is raw and spontaneous. Articulative expression, while it may bear qualities associated with arborescent thought too, holds revolutionary potential. It organizes the affects into its own or prescribed assemblages. A rhizomatic articulative would combine various fragments into novel and unexpected structures and assemblages. There's a lot less permanence in the rhizomatic articulation, as the connections are made to be fluid and transformative, based on which new connections emerge and the old ones dissolve. The structures themselves encompass transformation and decentralization. Arborescent articulation, however, adheres to a centralized, static structure with fixed relations among the nodes. Arborescent articulation may seek universality and stability, whereas rhizomatic articulation would create novel assemblages specific to their functionality.
In this case, one may also wonder how affective expression may persist alongside arborescent thought. Affects aren't independent and do not occur in a vacuum. They may precede prescriptive notions of emotionality but do not necessarily precede modes of thought. Adherence to arborescent modes of thought may influence affects quite differently. The affects may find themselves within the structuralist biases of arborescence. Its emphasis on hierarchical, structured modes of thought, significantly influences how one experiences, categorizes, and expresses affects. It shapes the prominence of certain emotions, the stability of emotional patterns, and the adherence to societal norms. It often also results in a nostalgic character, or an aesthetical essentialist, who may not be able to understand or articulate assemblages of expression but will have a hierarchy-induced experience with affects, where there is a hierarchy of affects. It's mainly a familiarity with the systemic hierarchy of aesthetics and percepts to such a degree that the hierarchy is sought to be replicated in its rawest manifestations.
Typologyn't
Earlier models of these two axes would simply place an entire person into a specific position that would fit their overall personality the best. Later models would bring in heatmaps and portal-ing, the former depicting movement across the compass in intensities, and the latter depicting a portal-ing into various parts of the compass based on different contexts and featuring different intensities.
While some of these approaches harbor more dynamism than others, it's still typology that they're operating under, which would, alongside any static notions of an individual, greatly be a form of control imposed on oneself. The first approach, obviously, essentializes an individual, and focuses only on the central facets, completely eradicating variance and the interplay of various forces within a person. It provides two opposing binaries, based on which the individual finds their territory. The latter approaches would still mainly fixate on a person and how they may travel across the compass. The heatmaps limited themselves via the continuity of one's movement, and the involvement of contexts still brought them in as some abstract identities that would not vary based on the ensemble of forces they're encompassed by. Not every instance of a person composing music would feature an identical interplay of these forces due to the varying contexts and desires surrounding each instance.
Placements (static or dynamic) on a so-called compass aren't what these contexts, thoughts, and acts result in. In fact, the aspects within these axes' descriptions are often themselves the contexts. In that regard, we could potentially pinpoint the rhizomatic/arborescent thought or articulative/affective expression in an act or a thought, but even that would feature a unique ensemble of interactions among all of these forces (in truth, flows that can be summarised as those forces). In fact, a more conceivable depiction would be the ensemble of existence's flows, affects, and interplays. A rhizome instead of a compass, where manifests many variances of flows which could be summarised as arborescent thought, rhizomatic thought, affective expression, and articulative expression. Where there's no identical pathway between rhizomatic and arborescent flows or affective and articulative ones.
While there are many ways for typology to be desired, active use of it is counter-revolutionary. It confines people within static notions of selves, who may use these conceptual territories they belong to as justifications for their actions. Moreso, a static diagnosis of someone's personality is often also bound to limit the active revolution that a person potentially harnesses. Why act in revolutionary ways when you're diagnosed essentially as a revolutionary? Therefore, the emphasis should lie on connecting with the various forces influencing the socius (and us) and liberating ourselves molecularly and molarly from these arborescent forms of control. Focusing on how we revolutionize the moment and what lies ahead, instead of mapping the generalities of our past. Becoming over being.
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