This thesis proposes to read Angela Carter's novel The Infernal Desire-Machines of Doctor Hoffman in conjunction with Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. This will show that the novel is Carter's first explicitly feminist work which postulates a de-essentialized female subjectivity that is 'ex-centric' to both British and French feminist discourse of the early 1970s. Using Deleuze and Guattari's materialist metaphysics she is able to produce a radical fictional critique which affirms the possibilities for difference without dualism, female desire and enunciation, and political change.
In Chapter One, Carter's novel is contextualised within her own work and within critical thought of the early 1970s and specifically feminist thought. This leads to a critical assesment of the reception of the novel from its publication until the late 1990s. In Chapter Two both Guattari's and Deleuze's intellectual development preceding Anti-Oedipus is fleshed out to show that especially Deleuze's interests often echo those of Carter. This leads eventually to an overlap of concerns in Anti-Oedipus and Doctor Hoffman. Chapter three concludes that, even if the terminological proximity between Carter's 'desire machines' and Deleuze and Guattari's machines désirantes would be accidental, reading them alongside each other is productive, offering both a clarification of the complex narrative of Carter's novel and an early feminist critique of Deleuze and Guattari's first collaboration.
contents
[Preface]
[Chapter One: Introduction]
[Chapter Two: Deleuze and Guattari]
[Chapter Three: Carter]
[Conclusion: Towards a Materialist Metaphysiscs]
[Postscipt]
[Bibliography]
[Samenvatting] (Summary in Dutch)
This HTML-version has no endnotes. I will soon add a PDF-file containing the correct references.