Postscript The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realise you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end. --Paul Auster, In The Country of Last Things As a final remark I wish to emphasise, again, the limited scope of this thesis. I have concentrated solely on the question of subjectivity which I believe to be one of the main themes of Dr Hoffman. As I have pointed out in this conclusion, I think the novel is a book of ethics. As such it concerns with value in this postmodern era. At the same time, and closely connected to it, I nonetheless believe it is also, again like Anti-Oedipus, a book of semiotics, dealing with questions of meaning in this deconstructing textual/visual world which lead, I am tempted to say, to a materialist metafiction which denounces depoliticised postmodern nihilism as 'mannerist' and 'fun but frivolous'. In the end, however, I believe this semiotic trail also leads to the radical materialism that I have identified as the central underlying epistemological assumption of Carter's work (think, in this respect, about her aforementioned remark about the materiality of symbols). Therefore I repeat the first of the reasons I have given in Chapter Three as to why I have chosen to focus only on one aspect of the book: an in-depth analysis of a specific aspect, in my view, enhances our knowledge of the writer's 'premises about reality' at least as much as, if not more than, an all-inclusive but, as a consequence of limited time, necessarily more superficial reading. And, as I have written, Carter's questioning of subjectivity leads, I believe, to a more original analysis than a examination of the relation between the signifier and the signified would have led to, because of the light it sheds on the relation between Carter and Deleuze and Guattari. I have gone to great length, especially in my discussion of Deleuze's work anterior to Anti-Oedipus, to establish the fundamental ties between Carter and Deleuze and Guattari. Especially in the light of this elaborate treatment of Deleuze's 'materialist metaphysics' and Deleuze and Guattari's history of desire-repression, my analysis of the relation between the writers, which focusses mainly on the desire machines/desireing-machines, might seem scanty. Again: this is due to limited time. I believe that one can also expand on, for instance, the parallels and divergences between Deleuze and Guatari's history of capitalism and desire-repression and Carter's anthropological 'adventures' with the river people and the centaurs, or the (dis)similarities between Deleuze's work on Sacher-Masoch and Carter's exposition of the count's philosophy. As I have said, I really do hope someone will, one day, look at these parallels in more detail and that my thesis can help as a starting point for this further exploration. I feel, however, that, while the variation in lenght of the different parts of this thesis does in a sense lead to an unbalanced piece of writing, my conclusion cannot do without the elaboration on Deleuze's criticism of the categorical image of thought. Furthermore, the whole work is a cartography of my intellectual development of the last three years. It maps, I believe, my own 'finding my own voice'. It is not a brilliant piece of work (just as I think Dr Hoffman is not a brilliant novel) but rather, as Rushdie says, an interim report of the development of my consciousness, and as such an, at least for me, interesting record of my journey through feminism and poststructuralism. I will stop here, but, to speak with Auster, I have not come to an end. I hope, with Margaret Atwood, that my final period will be like a 'pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see trough, to the other side, to the beginning of something else.' table of content | conclusion | bibiography This HTML version contains no endnotes. Please see the PDF version or the bibliography for the correct references. (c)1999 Raymond van de Wiel | www.raymondvandewiel.nl .
The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realise you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end. --Paul Auster, In The Country of Last Things
As a final remark I wish to emphasise, again, the limited scope of this thesis. I have concentrated solely on the question of subjectivity which I believe to be one of the main themes of Dr Hoffman. As I have pointed out in this conclusion, I think the novel is a book of ethics. As such it concerns with value in this postmodern era. At the same time, and closely connected to it, I nonetheless believe it is also, again like Anti-Oedipus, a book of semiotics, dealing with questions of meaning in this deconstructing textual/visual world which lead, I am tempted to say, to a materialist metafiction which denounces depoliticised postmodern nihilism as 'mannerist' and 'fun but frivolous'. In the end, however, I believe this semiotic trail also leads to the radical materialism that I have identified as the central underlying epistemological assumption of Carter's work (think, in this respect, about her aforementioned remark about the materiality of symbols). Therefore I repeat the first of the reasons I have given in Chapter Three as to why I have chosen to focus only on one aspect of the book: an in-depth analysis of a specific aspect, in my view, enhances our knowledge of the writer's 'premises about reality' at least as much as, if not more than, an all-inclusive but, as a consequence of limited time, necessarily more superficial reading. And, as I have written, Carter's questioning of subjectivity leads, I believe, to a more original analysis than a examination of the relation between the signifier and the signified would have led to, because of the light it sheds on the relation between Carter and Deleuze and Guattari.
I have gone to great length, especially in my discussion of Deleuze's work anterior to Anti-Oedipus, to establish the fundamental ties between Carter and Deleuze and Guattari. Especially in the light of this elaborate treatment of Deleuze's 'materialist metaphysics' and Deleuze and Guattari's history of desire-repression, my analysis of the relation between the writers, which focusses mainly on the desire machines/desireing-machines, might seem scanty. Again: this is due to limited time. I believe that one can also expand on, for instance, the parallels and divergences between Deleuze and Guatari's history of capitalism and desire-repression and Carter's anthropological 'adventures' with the river people and the centaurs, or the (dis)similarities between Deleuze's work on Sacher-Masoch and Carter's exposition of the count's philosophy. As I have said, I really do hope someone will, one day, look at these parallels in more detail and that my thesis can help as a starting point for this further exploration. I feel, however, that, while the variation in lenght of the different parts of this thesis does in a sense lead to an unbalanced piece of writing, my conclusion cannot do without the elaboration on Deleuze's criticism of the categorical image of thought. Furthermore, the whole work is a cartography of my intellectual development of the last three years. It maps, I believe, my own 'finding my own voice'. It is not a brilliant piece of work (just as I think Dr Hoffman is not a brilliant novel) but rather, as Rushdie says, an interim report of the development of my consciousness, and as such an, at least for me, interesting record of my journey through feminism and poststructuralism. I will stop here, but, to speak with Auster, I have not come to an end. I hope, with Margaret Atwood, that my final period will be like a 'pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see trough, to the other side, to the beginning of something else.'
(c)1999 Raymond van de Wiel | www.raymondvandewiel.nl
