Deleuze, Femininity and the Specter of Poststructural Politics: Variations on the Materiality of Rhetoric

In this thesis I rethink the materiality of rhetoric in a minor key. I review poststructural and psychoanalytic endeavors to position rhetoric from within the postmodern and poststructural critique of the subject. I move beyond the logic of influence (dependent on a flawed conception of object) and hermeneutics (the correspondingly flawed methodology). In this endeavor, I primarily enlist Deleuze and Guattari (1987) for a conceptual apparatus that enlivens the "thinness" of rhetoric's (neo)Aristotelian conceptual design (cf. Gaonkar, 1997a, 1997b). I offer Monster (2003) as a case study, analyzing the discursive expression of nondiscursive abstract machines to draw out the reterritorializations of the latter. Recognizing the impossibility of complete reterritorialization I map one artifact that reinvests difference in itself, Dancer in the Dark (2000). Finally, in the epilogue I provide a brief recapitulation of minor politics, and offer a summarization of the utility of rhetoric.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of North Texas

Year dc:date

2004

Author dc:creator

• May, Matthew S.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lain, Brian A.
• Taylor, Juandalynn
• Byers, Lori

• Rhetoric.
• Deleuze, Gilles -- Criticism and interpretation.
• politics
• Deleuze
• rhetoric
• poststructuralism
• materiality

Statement dc:rights

• Public
• Copyright
• May, Matthew S.
• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

oclc: 58796362
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4691/
ark: ark:/67531/metadc4691

OAI identifier oai:identifier

info:ark/67531/metadc4691