Instead, everyone would just coexist and be connected. If our society functions as a rhizome, then people would have to recognize that everyone is connected regardless of how different they are. In Butlers writing, Violence, Mourning, Politics, she explains, “the ‘I’ who cannot come into being without a ‘you’ is also fundamentally dependent on a set of norms of recognition that originated neither with the ‘I’ nor with the ‘you’” (45). In other words, a person cannot truly understand themselves and is not a real person without being able to recognize others in society. Butler explains that society has created the standard that a normal American is a white person and fails to recognize any other group and therefore marks these unrecognized people as unhuman, ungrievable, and unimportant lives. This standard automatically places white people at the top of a hierarchy. In order for the idea of the rhizome to function, everyone must recognize that no one is an individual and that there is no need for a hierarchy because we are all connected and function
Instead, everyone would just coexist and be connected. If our society functions as a rhizome, then people would have to recognize that everyone is connected regardless of how different they are. In Butlers writing, Violence, Mourning, Politics, she explains, “the ‘I’ who cannot come into being without a ‘you’ is also fundamentally dependent on a set of norms of recognition that originated neither with the ‘I’ nor with the ‘you’” (45). In other words, a person cannot truly understand themselves and is not a real person without being able to recognize others in society. Butler explains that society has created the standard that a normal American is a white person and fails to recognize any other group and therefore marks these unrecognized people as unhuman, ungrievable, and unimportant lives. This standard automatically places white people at the top of a hierarchy. In order for the idea of the rhizome to function, everyone must recognize that no one is an individual and that there is no need for a hierarchy because we are all connected and function