Differential desiring practice- A path into a Deleuze inspired literary discourse

Abstract

Drawing on Deleuze’s and Deleuze-Guattari’s differential and A path into a Deleuze inspired literary discourse in Difference and repetition and The logic of sense; Anti-Oedipus and A thousand plateaus and their engagement with literary texts in Kafka: Toward a minor literature; Proust and signs and Masochism: Coldness and cruelty, I unfold the following problematic in this thesis: What Deleuze (and Deleuze-Guattari) inspired critical practice can be theorized which allows the reading of works that resist interpretative representational practices? Proposing the differential, the libidinal, the schizoanalytic, the symptomatological and the simulacral as schizoid processes of discursive dissociation, this thesis theorizes and develops such a practice. More specifically I unravel and explore, theoretically and practically, the strands of what I term a differential desiring practice. Further I demonstrate the usefulness and power of this differential desiring practice, engaging first with Duras’ work as schizoid and liminal processes of event and becoming; and second with Carter’s work as schizoanalytic and parodic processes. Overall this thesis presents differential desiring practice as a reading and writing practice marked by thematic and stylistic schizodicity and discursive dissociation. Such a presentation not only opens a new path into a Deleuze inspired literary discourse by reappraising Deleuze’s and Deleuze-Guattari’s differential and schizoanalytic project, but puts forward a productive model for working with recalcitrant literary texts.Doctor of Philosoph