Deterritorialising patriarchal binary oppositions: Deleuze & Guattari, Virginia Woolf, Masculinities and Film Adaptations Dolors Ortega ADVERTIMENT. La consulta d’aquesta tesi queda condicionada a l’acceptació de les següents condicions d'ús: La difusió d’aquesta tesi per mitjà del servei TDX (www.tdx.cat) i a través del Dipòsit Digital de la UB (diposit.ub.edu) ha estat autoritzada pels titulars dels drets de propietat intel·lectual únicament per a usos privats emmarcats en activitats d’investigació i docència. No s’autoritza la seva reproducció amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva difusió i posada a disposició des d’un lloc aliè al servei TDX ni al Dipòsit Digital de la UB. No s’autoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX o al Dipòsit Digital de la UB (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant al resum de presentació de la tesi com als seus continguts. En la utilització o cita de parts de la tesi és obligat indicar el nom de la persona autora. 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Universitat de Barcelona Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya Deterritorialising Patriarchal Binary Oppositions: Deleuze & Guattari, Virginia Woolf, Masculinities and Film Adaptations Dolors Ortega Arévalo Under the Supervision of Dr Ana Moya Gutierrez September 2012 Contents Introduction 1 1 The n-becomings of male characters 7 1.1 Introduction .............................. 7 1.2 Masculinities in context ....................... 8 1.2.1 Masculinities and Gender Studies .............. 8 1.2.2 Masculinities at the beginning of the century . 15 1.3 Literary representations of masculinities . 18 1.3.1 Woolfian male characters . 22 1.3.2 Woolf’s conceptualisation of gender . 62 1.4 Scholarship on Woolf and masculinities . 66 1.4.1 Imperialism, patriarchy, fascism = Virginia Woolf and masculinity .......................... 66 1.4.2 Psychoanalytic studies on Woolf . 68 1.4.3 Male homosexuality ..................... 70 1.4.4 Androgynous Woolf ..................... 72 1.4.5 Poststucturalist approaches to gender: The merging of genders ............................ 73 1.5 Conclusion: Why Deleuze and Guattari? . 76 2 Deleuzo-Guattarian gender becomings 79 2.1 Introduction .............................. 79 2.2 Nomadic subjectivities and becomings . 83 2.2.1 Deleuze and Guattari in context . 83 2.2.2 Anti-Oedipus: Dismantling fixed molar Oedipal subjectivity 85 i ii CONTENTS 2.2.3 A Thousand Plateaus. Towards a molecularisation of the subject: The Body without Organs and its multiplicity of becomings . 113 2.2.4 Becoming-woman: A challenge against the dichotomous thought of gender . 120 2.2.5 The rhizome on a social plane: Towards a micropolitics of gender . 127 2.2.6 The n-becomings of gender/sexual difference . 131 2.3 Feminist intersections . 138 2.4 Deleuzo-Guattarian masculinities . 168 2.5 Deleuze and Guattari’s passion for Woolf . 170 2.6 Woolf’s passion for the molecular . 174 2.7 Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to Woolf . 175 2.8 Conclusion ..............................177 3 Molar and molecular masculinities 179 3.1 Introduction ..............................179 3.2 Rhizomatic vision of Mrs Dalloway . 180 3.2.1 The genesis of Mrs Dalloway . 180 3.2.2 Masculine formations . 197 3.2.2.1 Molar masculinities . 198 3.2.2.2 Anti-femininity & female mimicry . 208 3.2.3 Molecular masculinities . 214 3.2.3.1 Peter Walsh . 214 3.2.3.2 The becoming-woman of Septimus Warren Smith . 220 3.2.4 Septimus Warren Smith: An empty BwO . 227 3.3 Orlando: The plane of immanence . 228 3.3.1 The novel in context. The genesis of Orlando: Characters, plots, style. A rhizomatic configuration. 228 3.3.2 Performativity, arbitrariness and multiplicity of gender/ sex figurations . 241 3.3.3 The satire of molar gender constructions . 252 3.3.4 The case of Orlando: Androgynous or molecular individ- uation? ............................255 3.3.5 The becoming-woman of Orlando . 265 3.3.6 Orlando: A full BwO . 268 3.4 Conclusion ..............................269 CONTENTS iii 4 Film adaptations 271 4.1 Introduction ..............................271 4.2 Virginia Woolf and “The Cinema” . 275 4.3 Fidelity vs. intertextuality discourses . 279 4.4 Mrs Dalloway: The molar and the molecular . 286 4.4.1 Mrs Dalloway: Film adaptation in context . 286 4.4.2 Molar representations of male characters . 290 4.4.3 Molecular male representations . 302 4.5 Orlando: The molar and the molecular . 309 4.5.1 Orlando: Film adaptation in context . 309 4.5.2 The gaze and direct address to the camera in Sally Pot- ter’s Orlando (1992) . 313 4.5.3 Gender in the film . 317 4.5.4 The satire of molar gender formations . 331 4.5.5 Postfeminist ending? . 333 4.6 Conclusion ..............................336 Conclusion 339 Appendices 348 A Glossary 349 Bibliography 355 Filmography 397 Index 401 iv CONTENTS Acknowledgements It would not have been possible to write this doctoral thesis without the help and support of the encouraging people around me, to only some of whom it is possible to give particular mention here. First and foremost I offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Ana Moya, who has supported me thoughout my thesis with her patience, good advice and involvement in the process, whilst allowing me the room to work in my own terms. I have been indebted in the preparation of this thesis to Dr Maggie Humm of the University of East London, whose patience and dedication, as well as her academic experience, have been invaluable to me. I am extremely grateful to Dr Jeremy Gilbert of the University of East London, who supervised my chapter on Deleuze and Guattari and provided the most encouraging and helpful feedback. I would like to thank Dr Gilles Menegaldo of the University of Poitiers for his kindest disposition in agreeing to read my thesis and write a report for me to apply for the European Doctorate. Special thanks go to: My uncle Rafael Olivares, without whom I would not have had access to such an extensive range of bibliographical resources; Marcin Sobieszczański, my LaTeX advisor, for his extraordinary patience and help; Elisa Thomas, for her instructive discussions on Lacan and her dearest support; Iliana Loukopoulou for helping me with the molecularisation of Woolf in the cover; Anastasia Anapolytanou for sharing and building a vision; and Roser Icart for making me feel I have a home in London. Finally, I would like to thank my family for setting the grounds that have built me as the person I am constantly becoming. I wish to thank Anna for her endless support and inspiring energy, which constantly triggers the nomad that is hidden in me. v Introduction “Where we hope to land (and where we do land, though only for a fleeting moment, enough for tired wings to catch the wind anew) is a ‘there’ which we thought of little and knew of even less.” Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity And Its Discontents The summer of 2004 I came across a book that opened up new spaces, new unsettling territories, which made the fundamental structures of my perception of the world shake. Its intriguing vocabulary and dazzling conceptual machinery left me in a nomadic position, wandering from a familiar landscape towards an unknown and uncertain land. That book was Gilles Deleuze’s and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1980). My first contact with Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theoretical framework had a disquieting effect on me; I had the impression of witnessing a radical philosophy, which I was not sure to understand. As a matter of fact, that was a place I had already visited in reading Woolf. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s visceral philosophy1 made me revisit the dislocating and challenging routes that I had taken when reading Woolf. Their attack on the principles of modern subjectivity and their so suggestive proposal of a dynamic, productive, constantly changing process of individuation took me back to Woolf and her literature of excess. Woolf’s experimental style, her crossing of generic boundaries, and her fluid and limitless characterisations had led me to that nomadic space before.