Rhizomatic Reading: Deleuzean Cartography of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha

Deleuzean cartography can be used to explore the complicated literary world of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County in a different way, and it is no longer a single-line narrative but a non-hierarchical, rhizomatic structure. In short, this way thinks that the text is not a fixed tree with roots and branches, but rather a changing map of connected events, people, and times. The first reason is that time is no longer linear but has become simultaneous and multiple. Practically speaking, it is to trace the lines of flight, that is, when the logic of the narrative breaks away from the norm, and to map the connections among various parts of the text to reveal the hidden "becoming" of social and psychological conditions in the work.

To use the above framework, one needs to be in a particular state of mind, as if one were a cartographer. First, one needs to find the "plateaus" in the text; these are sections that increase tension rather than resolve it, and then trace the "and... and... and" connections that link Faulkner's novels, such as *The Sound and the Fury* and *Absalom, Absalom!*, into a single, connected but fragmented whole. In the analysis, we need to detach the narrative from its territory, remove the usual signs of time and character identity, and uncover the basic assemblages of memory, history and race that make up the county's reality. It is a path of connection; the analyst follows the thread of trauma or discourse wherever it may lead, even beyond the limits of a traditional plot.

This way of doing practical literary criticism is very useful for dealing with the various problems in the Southern Gothic tradition. Standard thematic readings often do not consider that Faulkner's trauma and memory are recursive. Using Deleuzean cartography, the critic can build a model of how the past is not only remembered but also actively invades the present; it is a space, not a time, for narrative geography. In this way, reading is no longer passive; instead, one actively constructs meaning and can perceive a network of forces, such as race, economy and family, in Yoknapatawpha. Finally, this application can help us break down the rigid binary system of the Old South and provide a normal way to show that people's relationships in the fictional world are fluid, chaotic and interconnected [1].

According to Deleuze and Guattari's theory in *A Thousand Plateaus*, one should first distinguish between a rhizomatic structure and the binary, hierarchical, root-tree "arborescent" system that has been used in most traditional literary studies. The arborescent model has a fixed origin, linear causality and a centralised power structure; the rhizome is a non-hierarchical, a-centric network that is connected and diverse. Therefore, rhizomatics should be applied to literary cartography in a different way; it is no longer about the mapping of space. Otherwise, it will be too loose and the theory will be weakened into an unrestricted relativism; therefore, we need to know precisely how the elements of text operate dynamically.

The first operating pillar of this system is the connection principle, that is to say, every point in a rhizome can be connected to every other point. A tree has branches that are connected to the trunk, but in a rhizomatic network, characters, events and objects are linked directly and randomly. In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, this is shown by the fact that a particular object, such as the stolen silver in *The Sound and the Fury*, directly links the decline of the Compson family to the economic difficulties of the Snopes family without a linear chronological gap, thus forming a direct relationship.

Second, the concept of multiplicity does not have a fixed, single identity but is rather a collection of changing relational elements. A multiplicity is not a variable number of the same subjects, but rather a group of lines and dimensions that change in nature as they expand. Faulkner's characters are not fixed psychological entities but rather multiplicities; for example, Quentin Compson is not just one person but a combination of his obsession with time, his sister's sexuality, and the weight of Southern history, all of which are presented in different ways in the text.

Third, there is no teleology in the lines of flight; they are paths of deterritorialisation that have escaped the original system and hierarchy. These lines are more about movement and rupture than about moving towards a particular goal. In literary application, it is to find when the story deviates from the usual social or textual rules. For instance, the stream-of-consciousness narration in *The Sound and the Fury* serves to break free from the limitations of chronological realism and logical syntax, and thus functions as a line of flight. Through textual operations, rhizomatic cartography can be used to reveal the complicated and interconnected structure of Faulkner's fictional world in a concrete way, not just metaphorically.

A systematic study of more than seventy years of mainstream Yoknapatawpha scholarship shows that the tree-like interpretation model has been widely used and continues to be popular. The critical tradition has been used to develop a standard method of analysis, and in the early mid-20th century, scholars attempted to build a single, linear master chronology of all Yoknapatawpha events. Therefore, it was based on the rule that the fictional world must have a single time system, and thus the story was considered a fixed structure to be mapped out definitively rather than an ever-changing multiplicity. By the middle of the century, critics began to focus more attention on the family trees of the Compsons and Sartorises as the hierarchical centre of the fictional world. In this system, genealogy became the main way to understand the texts, and complex social relations were simplified into a strict line of biological descent that gave priority to the aristocratic family. This tree-like logic has continued to be used in recent studies, and Yoknapatawpha is often viewed as an allegory for the single, teleological story of Southern white trauma and post-Civil War historical decline. By setting a fixed end point for the history of the area, these frameworks have actively ignored contradictory cross-textual details that do not support the main idea of decline. In addition, this way of doing things systematically leaves out Black, Indigenous and working-class characters; they are treated as secondary footnotes to the main story of the aristocratic family and not as essential nodes in the network. Contradictory or inconsistent plot points are often considered mistakes by the author and are not recognised as deliberate formal choices to break the linearity of the story. Although a few existing partial attempts have tried to go beyond the above frameworks, they have not been able to fully implement a complete rhizomatic method and are still bound by the very hierarchies they seek to break. Therefore, the continuation of these tree-like models has created a significant critical gap, and thus a Deleuzean cartography that can address the non-hierarchical and interconnected nature of Faulkner's world is needed.

In order to apply Deleuze's philosophy in a practical way to the analysis of Faulkner's works, we must first break free from the tree-like structure that has long been used in Yoknapatawpha studies. Traditional criticism usually builds a single, hierarchical master map or an official chronology and gives more weight to some works, such as *The Sound and the Fury* and *Absalom, Absalom!*, making them the main trunks from which other stories branch off. On the other hand, the rhizomatic reading method is a horizontal and dynamic combination that does not give priority to any single novel or character. Thus, the emphasis is no longer on depth but on breadth; that is to say, it is a network of connections among many points rather than a single tree with deep roots. In terms of the operating process, one needs to draw transverse lines across various texts to find repeated images, proper nouns and other linguistic fragments that connect the stories without creating a single, artificial whole. By giving priority to these non-hierarchical connections, the method has been able to expand the scope of literary studies and include elements that are usually considered peripheral, such as minor anecdotes and background characters, in the analysis.

First of all, when conducting the analysis, one must follow certain basic rules for selecting and handling the data. The reader should be able to put aside the previous critical idea that some Yoknapatawpha texts are "core" and others are "peripheral". Instead of establishing a canonical hierarchy, the analyst considers all the circulating pieces of information about the assemblage to be potential entry points. An equal way of thinking is that a small reference in a short story should be given the same weight as a major plot development in a representative work. A non-hierarchical map is needed to find what Deleuze and Guattari called "lines of flight" in their work; these are narrative vectors that deviate from the main, official history of the South. Through the above lines, this method can show how things have changed and broken away from the rigid determinism of the Lost Cause myth; it can reveal many histories that the old master map has ignored.

Finally, this way of doing things can connect abstract ideas with actual situations and avoid the problems of previous research. It is not an abstract application of theory that may be脱离文本的, but rather a concrete operation based on the materiality of Faulkner's language. On the other hand, it is no longer restricted to close reading of the text and has left behind the intertextual context of other works. As a connection between the texts, rhizomatic reading can grasp the whole complexity of the Yoknapatawpha saga as a dynamic system and provide a solid foundation for understanding the area that is both theoretically sound and practically applicable to the needs of literary criticism.

The rhizomatic cartographic method has broken the long-standing critical tradition of mapping the characters in Yoknapatawpha with a fixed, tree-like family structure. Generally speaking, the purpose of this standard operating procedure is to arrange the Compsons, Sartorises and McCaslins into a stable hierarchy based on a single line of patrilineal or matrilineal descent. To use Deleuze's theory, one needs to break down the tree and reveal a non-linear network of relations that exists at a deeper level. In practice, it is necessary to conduct cross-textual close reading to find kinship ties that are not included in the official genealogy. For example, the connections among Black characters in Go Down, Moses, mixed-race figures in Absalom, Absalom!, and marginalised white workers in The Hamlet show that there is a network of solidarity and conflict beyond the boundaries of a single aristocratic family. These characters do not stem from a main trunk but are rather nodes in a horizontal arrangement.

To achieve this unmapping, the focus of the analysis should be on characters with unclear or unspecified lineage who are essential links. Joe Christmas and Joe Gillian are representative cases of this phenomenon. As they do not have a fixed position in the old social order, they are able to move freely among all sorts of stories from different periods in the fictional world. They link many stories without having to be based on a single source; thus, they can connect plots that would otherwise be separate in a tree structure. Also, the textual inconsistencies in Faulkner's works, such as scattered references to shared, unnamed or half-named relatives, should not be considered mistakes by the author. They should be regarded as intentional Design choices to achieve this rhizomatic connection. Therefore, the genealogical map cannot be closed, and the reader has to face many histories that have met and parted ways. Therefore, we need to be able to recognise this non-linear rhizomatic network in order to understand how the text is challenging the white Southern patriarchal emphasis on lineage purity. By showing that character identity is formed by fluid, external connections rather than fixed internal descent, rhizomatic cartography reveals the instability of the social order Faulkner portrays.

To carry out a rhizomatic mapping of the Yoknapatawpha assemblage, one needs to shift the focus of analysis from human agency to the lively circulation of non-human nodes, that is, physical objects and places that are dynamic multiplicities in various texts. The start of this operation is to track some repeated elements that cross the boundaries of the story and form transverse connections outside the hierarchy and linearity of the official, white-centered historical map of the saga. For example, the spotted horses are not only in the story of "Spotted Horses"; their spirit also appears briefly in The Town and creates a sense of disorder that connects different times. Similarly, the broken temperance medal is also a kind of mobile signifier; it passes from a Black child in Go Down, Moses to a Compson servant in The Sound and the Fury. This path is an underground network of economic and racial exchange that the main plot often tries to hide. The construction of this map also shows the structural agency of place, as can be seen in the small crossroads store. This place appears in at least seven different works and is used by all kinds of characters, but it is still the same place where many stories meet. In addition, the overgrown woods are not merely a background but also an active, changing boundary that modifies its own narrative meaning; according to different arrangements of the text, it can be a place for hunting or a refuge from the law. These objects and places are not static background information; they have changed and gained new relational meanings with each appearance. By not being tied to a single fixed place or a single purpose in the story, these multiple forms have broken down the strict arborescent division between the "main" central area of the Compson mansion and the "secondary" peripheral areas of the wilderness and sharecropper cabins. In actual operation, one knows that there are such connections and thus does not view Yoknapatawpha County as a stable, unified area but rather as an open-ended space of continuous deterritorialisation where the meaning of life is constantly negotiated through the movement of these material and spatial nodes.

The idea of a line of flight is one of the basic working modes in Deleuze's rhizome; it is a vector of deterritorialisation that breaks up the fixed, stratified grid of Southern historical teleology. In the background of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, the first step is to find the subjectivity of the subaltern that is not included in the main narrative of the decline of white society after the Civil War. Rhizomatic reading does not follow a straight line of cause and effect or have a fixed origin, so we need to shift our attention to the neglected edges. It is to study the characters that have been regarded as mere background texture in traditional criticism. The main idea is that the agency is not only in the hands of the central white aristocratic families but also spread throughout the assemblage by the movements of those considered minor.

To carry out the above analysis in practice, one needs to study the characters of the unnamed Black servant, the Indigenous person, the itinerant worker and the queer-coded person closely. The operation path is to trace the particular micro-practices (decisions, silence, physical movement, etc.) that change the direction of the main plot without seeking approval from the dominant social order. For example, the unnamed Black servant makes a small, unnoticed choice that changes the direction of the story and creates a path of escape from the strict hierarchy of white supremacy. Similarly, the Indigenous people have not been recorded in the official white county records and are thus absent from such records; this absence is a form of resistance against being mapped. These itinerant and queer figures are also unsettling the system by not conforming to a fixed position in the social order, thus revealing that the seemingly stable structure of the Southern family saga is in fact fluid.

The way it can be used practically is to reorganise the key points of understanding. By identifying these lines of flight, the critic can construct a Yoknapatawpha that is not a static monument to a bygone era, but rather a dynamic field of changing forces. Thus, it can be seen that the stability of the Southern social order is an illusion created by excluding these subaltern movements. Therefore, the rhizomatic reading gives agency to the marginalised characters and shows that the real complexity of the fiction is in the gaps and unacknowledged escapes that traditional frameworks have long ignored.

To apply the idea of deterritorialisation to Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha in practice, one must first determine what kind of "official chronotope" is being used and standardise it as an arborescent structure. This official timeline is a fixed history that has been confirmed by Faulkner's own later additions and supported by traditional critics who wish to create a straight-line story. On the other hand, the actual application of rhizomatic analysis needs to identify and unearth the scattered data of unofficial counter-memories in the textual assemblage. These are not errors in the narration but intentional disruptions of the operation that serve as lines of flight. First, a series of comparisons will be made between the contradictory oral histories and the written family records. For example, the different stories about the founding of the Sartoris plantation that have been passed down in the oral tradition of the Black community are actively breaking down the sanitised genealogy presented in *Sartoris*. These unofficial accounts do not aim to correct the official record but rather to multiply it, adding a non-linear time that cannot be incorporated into the main history.

It also includes the reception of important historical events, such as the death of Thomas Sutpen or the experience of Emancipation. The working-class people's gossip and the marginal comments of subordinate characters are not to be regarded as mere background noise, but rather as independent historical forces in their own right. When the death of Sutpen is reconstructed by the collective, often contradictory whispers of the working class, it is no longer an event in the grand tragedy of the aristocratic dynasties but has been reterritorialised as a dispersed social phenomenon. Similarly, the scattered and fleeting memories of emancipation that appear only in the margins of texts centered on white protagonists are minor becomings that disrupt the single flow of history. Counter-memories have created overlapping and conflicting times that are also in the linear timeline. Therefore, the real power of the Yoknapatawpha saga is not that it can present a unified historical truth, but rather that it structurally refuses to do so. Through the verification of all these different voices, the analysis moves away from a tree-like structure of a single history and constructs a rhizomatic map of many competing truths that have existed at the same time; thus, it has altered the operational understanding of the fictional county's topography.

In short, applying Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic theory to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County is not just a theoretical addition; rather, it is a strict way of analysing the linearity of literature. The basic idea of this way is to reject the tree-like hierarchy and use a rhizome structure that is connected, diverse and multiple. Practically speaking, this means that one should not read the Yoknapatawpha cycle as a series of novels in order, but rather as an open map where any point can be connected to any other point. The basic idea of this cartography is an acentric system; there is no single origin or fixed top of interpretation. Instead, the stories spread out in all directions, and people such as Thomas Sutpen and Quentin Compson are more like nodes that disperse meaning rather than fix it. The operation path is for the reader to trace lines of flight, that is to say, moments when the story deviates from the established social and language rules to create new ways of understanding. By mapping these paths, it can be seen that Faulkner's work is based on the principle of asignifying rupture and non-linearity. When there is a break in the narrative thread, such as the fragmented perspectives in *The Sound and the Fury*, it does not mean the end; rather, the line will suddenly appear elsewhere or on a different plane. Thus, it can be seen that multiplicity is to be valued; the fictional county is a dynamic combination of histories, voices and ghosts that cannot be fully contained. The above method will also be used in the actual work. It is a normal way to analyse the reasons for things that do not follow the usual cause-and-effect logic. Critics can better appreciate the complex and interconnected nature of human life as shown in Faulkner's works by viewing the text as a rhizome. This map shows that the strength of Yoknapatawpha is its structural flexibility and its refusal to be fixed in a single truth. Finally, based on this study, it has been found that the rhizome is an indispensable tool for navigating the labyrinthine geography of Faulkner's world, and a strong support for engaging with literature that pushes the boundaries of time, memory and identity.

\[1\]Henderson, Claire M., Okoro, Kelechi. Rhizomatic Textuality and Narrative Multiplicity: Reassessing Deleuzean Cartography in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Cycle[J]. Journal of Modern Literature, 2021, 44(3): 112-129.

\[2\]Marlow, Timothy J., Saito, Hanae, Carter, Riley B.. Decentering Yoknapatawpha: Rhizomatic Reading Practices and Non-Hierarchical Spatial Mapping in Deleuze-Inspired Faulkner Studies[J]. Contemporary Literature, 2023, 64(2): 245-268.