Halting the Production of Repression: paradox-based humour, or, deleuze, guattari, beckett, and the schizo's stick. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ionica, Cristina
• Is Part Of: Angelaki. Volume 21:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 99
• Page End: 118
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: paradox -- affect -- black humour -- abstract machine -- liberatory procedures; Literature -- Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; Philosophy -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; 100
• DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2016.1182729
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0969-725X

Abstract

Abstract: This paper analyses the contagious nature of the paradox as the functioning principle of Deleuze and Guattari's writing machines, aiming to emphasize the semiotic and socio-political contributions of any linguistic enterprise structurally based in paradoxes. Beckett's texts (and schizo procedures) are discussed here, as they are in Deleuze and Guattari's works, as component abstract machines apt to couple themselves to other abstract machines in order to generate increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching liberatory procedures. As the paper shows, paradox-based discourses of the highest degree of sophistication can bypass traditional models of "understanding, " replacing traditional requirements of textual interpretation with always-fruitful and immediate affective models of contact and "work" with the text. Consequently, repeated exposure to paradox-based discourses (in which black humour features prominently) is apt to generate sophisticated affects, delineating powerful procedures to obstruct repression mechanisms and articulating a model of empowerment based on contagion rather than hierarchical distribution.