sign in sign up
<<
Home , Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault (Deleuze book), Gilles Deleuze, Reterritorialization

CHAPTER 3

DETERRITORIALIZATION AND : AARON’S ROD AND A THOUSAND PLATEAUS

Lawrence for D.H. Lawrence does not necessarily enjoy a privileged position in the works of Deleuze or Deleuze and Guattari. While had discussed literature in some of his books that dealt with figures such as and , he had never explored Lawrence systematically. The sole exception to this may be found in the shape of Deleuze’s essay entitled “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”.1 However, there is no denying that Lawrence is often men- tioned in the works of Deleuze and Guattari and that even if their references are fragmentary they are in fact quite positive. 2 In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari make an interesting contrast with Michel , who maintained a negative stance towards D.H. Lawrence. Deleuze or Deleuze and Guattari’s engagement with Lawrence could be summarized as follows: firstly, there is the Lawrence who is against Freudianism as in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922); secondly, Lawrence as one of the writers who draw the lines of flight continually to escape from capitalist societies that give money enormous and power: Aaron’s Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923), Studies in Classic American Literature (1923); and thirdly, the Lawrence who closely resembles : The Man Who Died (1931), Apocalypse (1931). We can consider these three areas of interest in a little more detail as follows. To take the first: in order to decompose the myth of Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari adopt Lawrence’s anti-Freudianist viewpoint,

1 Gilles Deleuze, “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, in Essays Critical and Clinical (1993), trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1997, 36-52. 2 For a recent study, which thoroughly traces and examines Deleuze’s or Deleuze and Guattari’s citations of Lawrence, see Mary Bryden, Gilles Deleuze: Travels in Literature, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 50-83. 44 Literature along the Lines of Flight evaluating highly his early and astute critique of the “” with its social implications. Actually, Fantasia of the Unconscious can be a very effective introduction to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, particularly in the light of its discussions on desire.3 As for the second: one of Lawrence’s novels that Deleuze and Guattari refer to favourably is Aaron’s Rod, a novel that has traditionally been accorded a rather low standing within Lawrence’s body of work. This does not mean, however, that Deleuze and Guattari discuss Aaron’s Rod in its entirety: what they focus on is Lawrence’s of love,4 the function of Aaron’s flute,5 and the point at which Aaron arrives.6 But there is nevertheless a connection between this novel where the protagonist leaves his family and Deleuze and Guattari’s book which exhorts the reader to escape from Oedipal . In the third instance: in “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, Deleuze regards Lawrence as a follower of Nietzsche who, placing himself in the flow of life, developed the of affection. Since the influence of Nietzsche on Lawrence has often been investigated, Deleuze’s claim is not very surprising; the characters of Rupert Birkin in Women in Love and Rawdon Lilly in Aaron’s Rod, both, make a mention of Nietzsche’s “the ”. It must be said, however, that what Deleuze calls “the point of Aaron” is opposed to the stance of Lilly. As discussed in Chapter 2, Lilly’s Nietzschean can be regarded as Nazistic or Fascist. It is unthinkable that the authors of Anti-Oedipus, “the major enemy” of which, according to Foucault, is , value that aspect of Lawrence’s thought.7 Actually, Deleuze and Guattari do not overlook the latent Fascism in writers like Lawrence who are sensitive to the flow of desire. The relation between

3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: and Schizophrenia (1972), trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, London: Athlone, 1984. 4 Ibid., 5. 5 Ibid., 357: “Will Aaron leave with his flute, which is not a phallus, but a desiring-machine and a process of ?” 6 Deleuze, “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, 51: “Stop loving. Oppose to the judgment of love ‘a decision that love can never vanquish.’ Arrive at the point where you can no longer give any more than you can take, where you know you will no longer ‘give’ anything, the point of Aaron or The Man Who Died, for the problem has passed elsewhere: to construct banks between which a flow can run, break apart or come together” (emphasis in original). 7 , “Preface”, in Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, xiii.