From knowledge trees to rhizomes and rukus: plant metaphors in the relational organization of knowledge plant metaphors in the relational organization of knowledge
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Abstract
The tree has been used as a key metaphor, since the Middle Ages, to depict knowledge representation systems. However, the contemporary socio-technical context demands considerations that admit other representations of the ways in which
knowledge is produced, organized, and represented. In this sense, the purpose of this text
is to reflect on arboreal images used historically as representational symbols of knowledge
structures and, furthermore, to conjecture, within the scope of the transversal discussions
that involve the plane of sociobiodiversity involved in the production of knowledge, about
some of these representations used in different contexts and times. In the end, we arrive at
the representation of the Rhizome proposed by G. Deleuze and F. Guatari, the Baniana tree
by S. Ranganathan, and the Ruku tree, represented in the painting "The descent of the
Jenipapo shaman from the kingdom of medicines", (2021), produced by the Makuxi
indigenous artivist Jaider Esbell. The final considerations suggest that by broadening our
understanding of the tree as a representation of relationships and not of dichotomies or
hierarchies, we will be able to perceive, with more equity, the social, plural and
cosmological arrangements of knowledge.
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