'Decalcomania' and 'mapping' in this sense are only two areas of my investigation of the question of "the first" by means of which I will foreground the problematic position of mimesis in Deleuze.
Bearing in mind this question of resonance, let us concentrate for a while on the problematique relationship between 'decalcomania' and 'mapping' which Deleuze and Guattari develop in the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus (1987).
Now if a radical critique of binarism is an attempt at giving an explanation of not only how in metaphysical tradition thought is structured on oppositions, but also, how one is privileged over the other, then the appropriation of binarism into rhizome, without doubt, gets away from oppositions as such, but at the cost of still privileging, for example, mapping over decalcomania, or "A book is not the image of the world," over "A book is the image of the world."
I quoted this "fiction" from Borges because of its relevance for a discussion on the distinction between decalcomania and mapping.
DECALCOMANIA: French decalcomanie, from decalquer to copy by tracing (from de- de- + calquer to trace, from Italian calcare, literally, to tread, from L) + manie mania, from Late Latin mania.
Decalcomania is a word for tracing a figure especially when it is considered within the context of a mania in the 19th century France, and Europe in general.
All this reminds us the difference that Deleuze and Guattari introduce between decalcomania and mapping: if mapping is privileged over decalcomania it is because tracing in the sense of decalcomania always requires a definite figure to be copied and transferred on to another surface, whereas mapping is that activity which opens up this process to an infinity: it is an act of copying where an exactitude is required but the fullness of a figure will never be attained.
Both of them require a certain degree of resemblance, an exactitude between the model and its copy, yet if in decalcomania, the emergence of a figure is necessarily to be maintained, in mapping, though a point-to-point exactitude is required, a figure as a whole will never emerge.
Now I would like to point to the dictionary entry number 3 above and discuss a bit more about the resemblance between decalcomania and mapping with respect to decalquer (to copy by tracing).