There have been some queries about recent Deleuzian criticism and about possible feminist applications so I think I'll tell you about a book of my own. It's just come out, so given the speed of reviewing, if I don't tell you no one else will.
Marie Maclean <The Name of the Mother: Writing Illegitimacy> London and New York: Routledge,1994.
It's a very Deleuzian book, because it sets out to examine a minority-becoming, and to study the discourse of exclusion. It looks at the history, myth, psychoanalytic theory and case studies of bastards and pseudo-bastards, since those who use their mother's name fall into two categories: the illegitimate who have to, and what I may call the anti-genealogists who choose to.
I look at movements in personal narratives which I call legitimation (similar to territorialisation) relegitimation (acts like reterritorialisation) and delegitimation (acts like deterritorialisation). In the discourses of the writers themselves I trace the multiplication of tongues, using the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia, which is akin to the D&G indirect discourses and hybridisation.
The study of alternative family structures stresses the lines of flight which deviate from the hierarchical name of the father. It looks at the protean possibilities of the name and adopts Derridean theories of the signature. Of even more interest to feminists is the study of 'female genealogies', a concatenation of Irigaray and D&G's theories, which show how the inclusion of the excluded bastards in family trees produces a rhizomatic rather than arborescent model.
The case studies include theatrical families, but more particularly the six generations of mixed legal and illegal births in George Sand's family.
My case studies which pair female illegitimacy and revolution will interest feminists because the three greatest French revolutionary women were all illegitimate. Olympe de Gouges, Flora Tristan and Louise Michel. They inscribe both their rebellion and their feminism in very different ways, however. I should have said that although the theory is general, the case studies are nearly all taken from France, since that is my other field.
Then there is a section on the legitimate who delegitimated themselves by adopting the name of the mother, or bastardising themselves in other ways (all male writers). The debatable D&G notion of woman-becoming becomes very relevant here.
A study of the bastard / homosexual pair Leduc and Genet raises suggestions of the war machine (though I don't call it that) and also the vexed question of whether their writing success is subversion or reterritorialisation.
One of the most interesting theoretical questions is that raised by the study of critical responses to bastardy, and of what I call delegitimation by proxy. Here I look at the self-identification which takes place in Freud's Leonardo, Sartre's Genet and Derrida's Glas (also deals with Genet). The displacement of the subject in this form of giving birth to oneself is linked to the use made of the notion of 'immaculate conception' which Derrida got from Genet and Deleuze, I think, got from Derrida.
I am really keen to get some feedback and would be grateful if you'd send this
on to women's studies lists, or any others you think would be interested.
the problem Michael (I think) mnetioned for another book also arises here;
Routledge have chosen to bring the book out first in hardback, making the
Price very high. So I guess my first plea is to order it for your library,
And my second to pass on to me any reactions which might hasten the paperback
Edition. Forgive me if this sounds presumptuous, but I really have tried to
Open up a whole new area here, deterritorialising the theorists as I do so.
Marie Maclean macleanm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
------------------
Marie Maclean <The Name of the Mother: Writing Illegitimacy> London and New York: Routledge,1994.
It's a very Deleuzian book, because it sets out to examine a minority-becoming, and to study the discourse of exclusion. It looks at the history, myth, psychoanalytic theory and case studies of bastards and pseudo-bastards, since those who use their mother's name fall into two categories: the illegitimate who have to, and what I may call the anti-genealogists who choose to.
I look at movements in personal narratives which I call legitimation (similar to territorialisation) relegitimation (acts like reterritorialisation) and delegitimation (acts like deterritorialisation). In the discourses of the writers themselves I trace the multiplication of tongues, using the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia, which is akin to the D&G indirect discourses and hybridisation.
The study of alternative family structures stresses the lines of flight which deviate from the hierarchical name of the father. It looks at the protean possibilities of the name and adopts Derridean theories of the signature. Of even more interest to feminists is the study of 'female genealogies', a concatenation of Irigaray and D&G's theories, which show how the inclusion of the excluded bastards in family trees produces a rhizomatic rather than arborescent model.
The case studies include theatrical families, but more particularly the six generations of mixed legal and illegal births in George Sand's family.
My case studies which pair female illegitimacy and revolution will interest feminists because the three greatest French revolutionary women were all illegitimate. Olympe de Gouges, Flora Tristan and Louise Michel. They inscribe both their rebellion and their feminism in very different ways, however. I should have said that although the theory is general, the case studies are nearly all taken from France, since that is my other field.
Then there is a section on the legitimate who delegitimated themselves by adopting the name of the mother, or bastardising themselves in other ways (all male writers). The debatable D&G notion of woman-becoming becomes very relevant here.
A study of the bastard / homosexual pair Leduc and Genet raises suggestions of the war machine (though I don't call it that) and also the vexed question of whether their writing success is subversion or reterritorialisation.
One of the most interesting theoretical questions is that raised by the study of critical responses to bastardy, and of what I call delegitimation by proxy. Here I look at the self-identification which takes place in Freud's Leonardo, Sartre's Genet and Derrida's Glas (also deals with Genet). The displacement of the subject in this form of giving birth to oneself is linked to the use made of the notion of 'immaculate conception' which Derrida got from Genet and Deleuze, I think, got from Derrida.
I am really keen to get some feedback and would be grateful if you'd send this
on to women's studies lists, or any others you think would be interested.
the problem Michael (I think) mnetioned for another book also arises here;
Routledge have chosen to bring the book out first in hardback, making the
Price very high. So I guess my first plea is to order it for your library,
And my second to pass on to me any reactions which might hasten the paperback
Edition. Forgive me if this sounds presumptuous, but I really have tried to
Open up a whole new area here, deterritorialising the theorists as I do so.
Marie Maclean macleanm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
------------------