The Writing-Machine as Method: Affect, Acker, and the Traumatized Subject. Issue 1 (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Johnson, Freya
• Is Part Of: GeoHumanities. Volume 5:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 54
• Page End: 68
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: affect, -- Deleuze and Guattari, -- Kathy Acker, -- trauma, -- writing-machine.; 情感 -- 德勒兹和瓜塔里 -- 凯西．艾克 -- 创伤 -- 写作机器; afecto -- Deleuze y Guattari -- Kathy Acker -- máquina escritora -- trauma; Arts and geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2019.1586561
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2373-566X

Abstract

Abstract : In this article I explore writing as a method of attending to the singularities of life and worlds without thinking in terms of a primordial Whole. Deleuze and Guattari present the writing-machine as that which produces effects and transforms affective experience; the focus is on what use, rather than meaning, the writing has. I extend a discussion of this concept by exploring the generation of my own research space through machinic writing as a technique. I then turn to the development of trauma as the central research topic, and explore the capacity of my still-forming narrative— What Happened to Harriet —to unpick the clinically defined traumatized subject. The narrative illustrates traumatic experience as a chaotic and difficult-to-represent progression of sensations. To add texture to this discussion, I stay close to the work of Kathy Acker, whose own writing, often centered on trauma, exemplifies a fragmented, disruptive, and anti-Oedipal writing-machine.