Literary Paradox: Figures of Displacement and Disguise in Carroll, Kafka, Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Deleuze Público
Young IV, Eugene Brently (2010)
Published
Abstract
Abstract
Literary Paradox:
Figures of Displacement and Disguise
in Carroll, Kafka, Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Deleuze
By Eugene Brently Young
This dissertation elaborates a theory of literary paradox,
contending that the
displacement and disguise of literary figures involves the
paradoxical expression of ideas.
Such ideas, which express the differences between figures of
displacement and disguise,
mark an intersection between literature and philosophy.
Displacement and disguise are
defined in terms of given likenesses that express difference and
dissociation, in contrast
to theories which presume that given differences or contradictions
(in a text or literary
system) can be associated to "paradoxically" express metaphorical
likeness or unity.
Gilles Deleuze provides a theoretical foundation for defining the
"idea" in terms of
difference that is not abstract but is constituted by the "powers
of repetition" within the
imagination.
There are four distinctive figures of displacement and disguise
investigated in this
dissertation, which I define in terms of the description of forms
or appearances
(perceptual figures), bodily states or dispositions (affective
figures), figures of presence
and recurrence, and the absence of the figure. I analyze these
figures and the paradoxical
ideas they express in the literature of Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
and Maurice Blanchot. I contend that Blanchot radicalizes literary
paradox by evacuating
the figure of its lived (perceptual and affective) qualities as
well as its presence. I
conclude by investigating Deleuze's paradoxes of life and habit
with regard to Deleuze's
and Blanchot's paradoxes of the immemorial and the eternal
return. I argue that while
Blanchot is uncompromising in his depiction of the unlivable and
absent, he elides the
qualitative distinctiveness of figures of perception, affect, and
presence.
Literary Paradox:
Figures of Displacement and Disguise
in Carroll, Kafka, Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Deleuze
By
Eugene Brently Young
B.A., Syracuse University, 2003
Advisor:
Professor Jill Robbins
Ph.D., Yale University, 1985
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy
in Comparative Litearture
2010
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Literary Paradox:
Contradiction, Self-Reference, and Unity; Displacement, Disguise,
and Difference
1
Chapter II
The Perceptual Figure in Carroll and Kafka
50
Chapter III
The Affective Figure in Nietzsche and Kafka
105
Chapter IV
The Figuration of Presence in Nietzsche and Kafka
148
Chapter V
Blanchot's Figureless Figure
195
Chapter VI
The Determination of the Idea via Deleuze and Blanchot:
Paradoxes of the Habitual, the Immemorial, and the Eternal
Return
241
Abbreviations
273
Bibliography
275
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