TY - JOUR
T1 - Desire, Affect, and Becoming
T2 - A Deleuzian Reading of A Streetcar Named Desire
AU - Choi, Seokhun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors. Published by JRSR. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The paper attempts a revisionary analysis of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire by focusing on the positive aspect of desire in light of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s postmodern philosophy of affect and becoming. While the critical interpretation of the play has tended to revolve around Blanche and Stanley’s conflict in terms of binary oppositions, their similarities—sexual and alcoholic indulgence, for instance—and the complexity of their characters challenge such a schematic reading. Inconsistent and often similar to each other, the characters of Streetcar are non-hierarchical and anti-essentialist entities—what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘desiring machines’—whose differences are only a matter of degree or intensity. Driven by desire, they affect and are affected by each other while making new connections and reconstituting old ones as they become something else. Rather than dramatizing a clash between different individual beings and the destructive consequences of desire, Streetcar is a play of becoming that attests to the productive and revolutionary potential of desire. Blanche’s relations with the other characters ultimately lead to the deterritorialization of the French Quarter and destabilize old ties that kept them dependent on or even subject to others. In this respect, the play celebrates body’s infinite potential to affect and be affected and produce real consequence as a play of anti-fascism. The play’s politics of becoming, evinced by Williams’ nuanced portrayal of the characters, challenges us to imagine new possibilities of identity and relationship in postmodernity.
AB - The paper attempts a revisionary analysis of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire by focusing on the positive aspect of desire in light of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s postmodern philosophy of affect and becoming. While the critical interpretation of the play has tended to revolve around Blanche and Stanley’s conflict in terms of binary oppositions, their similarities—sexual and alcoholic indulgence, for instance—and the complexity of their characters challenge such a schematic reading. Inconsistent and often similar to each other, the characters of Streetcar are non-hierarchical and anti-essentialist entities—what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘desiring machines’—whose differences are only a matter of degree or intensity. Driven by desire, they affect and are affected by each other while making new connections and reconstituting old ones as they become something else. Rather than dramatizing a clash between different individual beings and the destructive consequences of desire, Streetcar is a play of becoming that attests to the productive and revolutionary potential of desire. Blanche’s relations with the other characters ultimately lead to the deterritorialization of the French Quarter and destabilize old ties that kept them dependent on or even subject to others. In this respect, the play celebrates body’s infinite potential to affect and be affected and produce real consequence as a play of anti-fascism. The play’s politics of becoming, evinced by Williams’ nuanced portrayal of the characters, challenges us to imagine new possibilities of identity and relationship in postmodernity.
KW - A Streetcar Named Desire
KW - Deleuze and Guattari
KW - Tennessee Williams
KW - affect
KW - becoming
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85151085165&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.15794/jell.2018.65.1.006
DO - 10.15794/jell.2018.65.1.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85151085165
SN - 1016-2283
VL - 65
SP - 111
EP - 126
JO - Journal of English Language and Literature
JF - Journal of English Language and Literature
IS - 1
ER -