Becoming Deterritorialized: Reading Tim Etchells’ The BRoKen WoRLD after Gilles Deleuze
Keywords:
Gilles Delueze, Félix Guattari, becoming, deterritorialization, Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment, The BRoKen WoRLDAbstract
The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze is a complex and open system whose “anything-goes” or, to borrow Deleuze’s own term, rhizomatic, i.e. interconnected and interconnectable nature constitutes a major potential of the theory for many areas of academic discourse. The application of Deleuze’s thought on writing that is performative and performance-influenced thus seems constructive, since art, performance writing and philosophy have a transformative capacity via their ability to challenge the territory between the work of art and its recipient. The present paper elaborates on the productive quality of two crucial concepts of Gilles Deleuze, becoming and deterritorialization. In the second part of the article these concepts are applied to The BRoKeN WoRLD, a novel by Tim Etchells. The conclusion of the paper suggests that Etchells’ invitations to trespass the in-between territory among author, work and recipient is graspable via the theoretical apparatus provided by the Deleuzian creative machinic drive to rupture the fourth wall, with proximity and engagement provoking the exposure of the reader to nakedness, along with a sympathetic, deterritorialized series of becomings.
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