Literature as a Passage of Life: An Overview of Deleuze-Guattari's Literary Critical Thought

YIN  Jing

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Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art ›› 2012, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (5) : 88-93.

Studies in Western Literary Theory

Literature as a Passage of Life: An Overview of Deleuze-Guattari's Literary Critical Thought

YIN Jing

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Abstract

This paper attempts to summarize Deleuze-Guattari's literary critical thought with their claim that literature is "the passage of Life within language which constitutes Ideas." The paper first explicates Deleuze-Guattari's concept of "Life," pointing out that it refers not to concrete or abstract individual life, but to an impersonal and nonorganic power that is proper to the flow of matter-energy and can produce and create differences. The power carries out ceaseless and endless production of desire and various becomings on the plane of immanence. The paper points out that traditional Western philosophy uses binary oppositions to organize the plane of immanence in a transcendent way, thus preventing the free-flow and production of Life. The paper maintains that Deleuze-Guattari's literary criticism takes an ethical point of view in its concern with writers, and it then describes how writers by way of language formation turn into new ideas the varied forms of life-liberating and life-force-enhancing experiment and becomings.

Key words

Delezue-Guattari / impersonal and nonorganic life / becoming / language

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YIN Jing. Literature as a Passage of Life: An Overview of Deleuze-Guattari's Literary Critical Thought[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2012, 32(5): 88-93

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