William Faulkner's art of *becoming: A Deleuzean reading

Eunju Hwang, Purdue University

Abstract

Since the publication of John T. Irwin's Doubling and Incest , psychoanalytic interpretation has held an important place in Faulkner studies. This dissertation provides an alternative perspective on William Faulkner's fictions by' deploying a number of concepts developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, such as becoming, the lines of flight, and schizophrenia as a process. Becoming as a concept that opposes the Cartesian self sheds a new light on Faulkner's characters, who go through the intense experience of becoming-other. Their unconscious is often more social than familial in its formation due to their socio-cultural locations. Despite their temporary escape from their Cartesian selves through becoming-other than who they are, Faulkner's characters completely free themselves from the social codes. In Faulkner's world, however, language often breaks the norms of major language, reveals desires that are prohibited in society, and speaks the words of minorities that cannot be heard in reality. Following an introductory chapter that lays out my theoretical concerns, this dissertation stages a series of Deleuzean readings of four novels that Faulkner wrote in during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Mosquitoes marks a scaffolding in the formation of Faulkner's aesthetics, showing his struggle to distance himself from his former aesthetics and other artists to whom art is nothing but a substitute for a real satisfaction. Faulkner causes the becoming-other of language in As I Lay Dying through Addie's and Darl's agrammatical, asyntactical, apertinent use of language. Addie's "foreign" language reveals her desire to merge with other beings, and Darl's interior language exemplifies Deleuze-Guattari's concept of schizophrenia in its positive sense. Faulkner catalyzes the unusual encounters between people who belong to different social strata in Sanctuary. In each encounter, the characters momentarily escape their identities. Light in August is a story about a white man's becoming-black despite his white education and white mentality. Joe Christmas's failure in oedipal quests due to his racial indeterminacy shows that his unconscious is socially formed and "contaminated" with blackness. Faulkner is the artist of becoming; his characters and language constantly mutate and cause the reader's becoming-other.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Duvall, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature|Modern literature|Literature

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