To Believe In This World. Artaud, Deleuze And The Healing Practices of Language

Abstract

There is something intolerable in this world. Our bodies are traversed by unlivable, inhuman and yet vital and energetic fluxes that incite us to think these unrepresentable and unthinkable forces. A commitment to immanence requires a cultivated belief in this world that thinks the unthinkable and therewith engages with the impossible forces of life. Time and time again, Gilles Deleuze (and Félix Guattari) have emphasized that we have lost our belief in this world. In their conceptualization of the healing practices of language – a schizophrenic language that heals the impossible but vital link between man and this world, this life and this body – they constitutively read and reread the writings of Antonin Artaud. In this thesis, I have focused on Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) concept of biopolitics in order to see how a commitment to immanence – a belief in this world – should operate. After having analyzed their concept of a minor literature, I have read two texts by Artaud that will be arms of resistance against the burden of what he calls ‘the judgment of God.’ I have argued that a juxtaposed reading of both Artaud’s torsive and performative texts can bring about a belief in this world that restores the impossible but vital link between man and the immanence of life. Artaud’s texts are therewith exemplary healing practices of a body-language that incite us to think.