--Angela Carter, Notes from the Fornt Line
One can ask questions about the relevance of yet another interpretation of Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. I will refer simply to the quotation above which I subscribe wholeheartedly. Back in September l996, while strolling through Waterstones Gower Street, which I passed every day on my walk from the old oval reading-room of the British Library to Euston Square tube station, I came across Carter's aforementioned novel. I have, since then, put my teeth in the speculative relation between the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Carter's narrative simply because the title of her book reminded me of the 'desiring-machines' that Deleuze conceptualises in collaboration with Félix Guattari in their Anti-Oedipus. These are old texts, in fact, they are both exactly as old as I am, and the readings I will present in this thesis are, at least to some extent, new readings, for they are my readings in which resonate my personal views, preferences, and questions. And although I may not have come up with startling answers, this dialogue between Anti-Oedipus and Dr Hoffman has led to an extensive study of postmodern philosophy and literary theory which has not only broadened my theoretical horizon but also profoundly influenced my 'real' life in many ways (just as my real life has influenced the direction of my research). This iterative process has helped me to find my own voice, more libidinal and rhizomatic than before, and in that sense it has contributed to my intellectual development, and that is, basically, enough reason for yet another interpretation of Dr Hoffman.However, having said this, I also wish to emphasise that, although I have no illusions, this interpretation is, in my view, pertinent for other reasons. Leafing through the pile of Carter criticism that I have gathered in the past three years, there is only one reference to Deleuze and Guattari's book. Mention is made of the very terminological similarity that had attracted my attention in that London bookstore, but before it is even seriously considered, any conscious relation between the two works is denounced. I believe there is a conscious relation between Dr Hoffman and Anti-Oedipus, but it is not my primary aim to substantiate this conviction. What I do wish to corroborate, however, is that even if Carter had no knowledge of Deleuze and Guattari's theories whatsoever, bringing her fictional world in dialogue with their theoretical work is undeniably productive. It will, in my view, shed a new light on Carter's complicated narrative and on the specific feminist position it advocates, and it will, at the same time, add a distinctive voice to the choir of feminist critiques on Deleuze and Guattari's conceptualisations.The attitudes of both Carter and Deleuze and Guattari vis-a-vis feminism have been terrains of vigorous debates. Deleuze and Guattari have always been declared proponents of the feminist struggle. Especially Guattari, a radical psychiatrist, has in his work and life shown a continuous sympathy for marginalised groups including, besides women, immigrants, gays, and psychiatric patients. Deleuze's work antecedent to Anti-Oedipus is very academic, but he organized, together with Michel Foucault, de Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons, which critically monitored prison circumstances, and demonstrated his solidarity with the calls for educational reform by joining the faculty of the University of Paris' experimental campus at Vincennes. In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari plant the seed for a revolutionary politics for 'minorities' among which they also gather the inhabitants of formerly colonised countries. This theory is expounded in their Kafka: For a Minor Literature (l975) and has reverberated since then in many of their joint works, most prominently in the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus (l980). The productivity of their conceptualisations for feminism, however, has been questioned.The same goes for Carter. She has been a self-confessed feminist, but this identification with the feminist struggle did not guarantee a secure repose in the bosom of sisterhood. Before Dr Hoffman Carter had written five novels, a collection of poetry, and various children's stories, but these were admittedly written as a 'male impersonator'. In the aftermath of the countercultural rebellion in l968 she, however, rapidly radicalised as a feminist. This is explicitly evident in The Passion of New Eve (l977) and her non-fiction work The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (l979). The former has, until recently, by and large been neglected and the latter has been heavily criticised by radical feminists for its ostensible celebration of pornography. Carter nevertheless persisted in writing eccentric fantasies and controversial commentaries, and even gained critical acclaim, especially with her collection of rewritten fairy-tales The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (l979) and with her novels Nights at the Circus (l984) and Wise Children (l99l). Critics, however, remained to have difficulty in situating her work in relation to feminism.A dialogue between Dr Hoffman and Anti-Oedipus will, I believe, be helpful for the illumination of the respective positions of its writers towards feminism. I will, in this thesis, mainly focus on Carter's appropriation of Deleuze and Guattari's ideas about subjectivity. This will show that her 'ex-centric' position is a mixture of feminism and socialism which seems to mediate between French and British feminist positions, a search for a radically materialist and embodied subjectivity, a quest for de-essentialised female desire.In the introductory chapter I will deal with the reception of Dr Hoffman and try to form my own ideas about the novel on the basis of these diverse readings. In Chapter Two I will characterise Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and try to explain it using some of their older work, focusing on their ideas about subjectivity. In Chapter Three, then, I will bring these two works into resonance, focusing on various feminist ideas about subjectivity .This, I believe, will in the end lead to an appreciation of the meaning of Deleuze and Guattari's work for feminism and an understanding of the novel as a search for a post-poststructuralist female subjectivity.I wish extend my gratitude to many people but I will only name four women: firstly, Martine de Vos, who was, for a long time, my supervisor and gave me the freedom to experiment; secondly, Aleid Fokkema, my 'final' first supervisor who has helped to shape my mind and to work effectively towards an ending; thirdly, Rosi Braidotti, who has commented upon my reading of Deleuze and Guattari, and finally, my mother Jeanne, who was my greatest inspiration for finishing this piece of writing. table of content | Chapter One: Introduction This HTML-version has no endnotes. I will soon add a PDF-file containing the correct references. (c)1999 Raymond van de Wiel | www.raymondvandewiel.nl
This HTML-version has no endnotes. I will soon add a PDF-file containing the correct references.
(c)1999 Raymond van de Wiel | www.raymondvandewiel.nl
