Tracing the line : a Deleuzian reading of Irvine Welsh's Marabou stork nightmares
Using Gilles Deleuze's Baconian aesthetic theory to explore how feminism might rely on Deleuze's "becoming-woman" to express the feminine, this dissertation analyzes the expression of sexual violence-an experience gendered feminine-in Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares. I begin by establishing Welsh's work as what Deleuze terms a "minor literature". I argue, however, that it is largely the novel's visual nature (its acrobatic typography) that both establishes it as a minor literature and demands its exploration through Deleuze's text on painting rather than literature. Turning to Deleuze's study of Francis Bacon paintings in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, I explore the expression of sexual violence in Marabou Stork Nightmares through Deleuze's concept of becoming-woman. Put simply, this is a reading of a minor literature through Deleuze's Baconian lens. In doing so, this dissertation relies on an implicity connection between all the arts. An interdisciplinary endeavor, this project strives toward dismantling the illusory demarcations between the arts and toward reaffirming their interdependency.
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Department of English Language and Literature