本文是一篇英语论文，本论文使用德勒兹的“去威慑化”思想，对《午夜的孩子》进行更细致的解读。当在这样的理论背景下进行考察时，它被证明是一部小说，尽管它渴望美好的未来，但它清醒地意识到，如果不以批判性肯定的方式面对困扰着当下的问题，它渴望的目标就无法实现。这些发现的一个含义是，小说中的-主义——例如，它与后现代主义、民族主义、后殖民主义和魔幻现实主义的结合——需要更唯物主义的阅读，这反过来又转化为一种观点，即-主义本身也可能需要重新解释。
Chapter One Deterritorialising Arborescent Thinking in Midnight’s Children
1.1 The Materialist Re-Enactment of the Actual: the Amritsar Massacre
Before proceeding to examine the novel’s representation of the Amritsar massacre, also called the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, a look at the notion of the “actual” is indispensable. To Deleuze, the actual, one of the two components of the “real”—the other being the virtual, is “that which exists in time and space” (Aldea 20). Another name for the actual is the plane of organisation or transcendence, which operates as “a transcendent unity or hidden principle” to develop rigid forms and molar subjects (ATP 266). Deleuze and Guattari oppose “transcendent” thinking, which establishes itself “outside the given in some grand position of detached judgement”, to “transcendental” thinking, which refuses to judge condescendingly but instead contents itself with the question of how the actualities are generated (Colebrook 88). A transcendental viewpoint, in other words, considers the actual as an effect of physical processes, and as such, it focuses us on, rather than away from, the real. Hence it may be stated that whereas a transcendent system of thought is arborescent, a transcendental system of thought is rhizomatic.
Actual social and political events populate the pages of Midnight’s Children. From the very inception, the novel is concerned to be of relevance to the actual world, as evidenced by its renowned opening. This narrative urge persists. The Amritsar massacre on April 13th, 1919; the famine crises during World War II; the foundation of Pakistan on August 14th, 1947; the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965; the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971; and the imposition in India of a state of emergency that is to last almost two years on June 25th, 1975—all these actual historical events, and many more, maintain a conspicuous presence in the text. Instead of obscuring the connections between these momentous events and the more mundane occurrences in life, the novel goes out of its way to draw attention to the fact that they are invariably the results of fully material processes—that is to say, they are, without exception, produced out of the interactions of the diverse human and nonhuman beings in the world, as instanced by Saleem’s description of how Ilse Lubin’s “deathwish” and the Rani of Cooch Naheen’s disease of “going white in blotches” seep into history, and of how the “confusion and ruin” inside his family leak out “through the windows of the house”, take over “the hearts and minds of the nation”, and thus precipitate the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 (MC 53, 565, 463). In short, the novel is characterised by an urge to address the issue of how these events come to pass, instead of putting up a semblance of lofty detachment and casting down condescending glances at its objects of description. It is this urge that provides it with the momentum to debunk the assumption that arborescent, transcendent systems of thought, which serve the interests of the plane of organisation and thus operate to perpetuate the status quo, are independent of the material world in so relentless a manner, and to reveal that they are produced out of the intermingling of the world’s diverse elements and, after that, sustained by their cooperation and conformity to such great effect. A scrutiny of the novel’s rendition of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre will serve to elucidate the point.
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1.2 Engaging the Virtual: Saleem’s Antigenealogy and Mumtaz’s Devitalisation
Saleem’s antigenealogical, rhizomatic pedigree and Mumtaz’s premature devitalisation are important ways in which Midnight’s Children transcribes and probes the virtual terrain of life. Before going further, Deleuzian concepts such as the “virtual” and “becoming” require elucidation. Also referred to as the transcendental plane of consistency or immanence, the virtual, one of the two components of the real, is “a realm of potential”, or “the pressing crowd of incipiencies and tendencies” engendered by the actual which do not yet exist spatiotemporally but are nevertheless fully real (Massumi, Parables 30; Deleuze, Difference 279; D 148). Invariably “a genuine creation”, the actualisation of the virtual, as opposed to the realisation of the “possible”—in the restrictive sense of the word, is always a deterritorialisation process (Deleuze, Difference 212). Being rhizomatic, a “becoming” is an asymmetrical line or line-block of communication, symbiosis, or alliance passing between two things and subjecting them to a shared deterritorialisation (ATP 293-294).
That Saleem should turn out not to be the biological son of the Sinais, one of the most dramatic twists of plot in Midnight’s Children, testifies to the novel’s intense interest in fathoming the novel. The significance of this turn of events lies in the fact that it throws into question the validity of the transcendent discourse of hereditary filiation, an important means of reproduction for the arborescent power relations. As we learn, Saleem’s parents prove unable to imagine him of his role as their son after Mary Pareira’s revelations; and the lack of blood ties does not prevent Aadam’s “failure to believe or disbelieve in God” from infecting Saleem (MC 382).
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Chapter Two Deterritorialising Molarised Creativity in Midnight’s Children
2.1 Saleem’s Obsession with Transcendent Meaning
A notable thing in Midnight’s Children is that throughout the novel, the interchange between the personal and the social and the political is rarely shown to be productive: the same insidious turn of events re-enacts itself over several generations of Saleem’s family, as instanced by the so-called “inevitability of perforated sheets”; and the individual being, despite its potential power to alter the status quo, almost invariably caves in to the diabolical powers (the tragedy of Mumtaz’s life, for example). This observation, coupled with the fact that Saleem insists on describing what befalls him as being wrought by the “inescapable”, “relentless”, and “pre-ordained” destiny (MC 167, 586, 624), almost seems to suggest that the novel takes a fatalistic stance on life. However, as will be revealed by a scrutiny of Saleem’s relationships to his childhood sanctuaries—namely the large white washing-chest in his mother’s bathroom and the broken-down clocktower at Methwold’s Estate, the modes of connection between him and history, and the disintegration of the Midnight Children’s Conference Saleem telepathically convenes, the seemingly fatalistic streak in the text is but part of its project to expose the need to deterritorialise the body’s molarised, cramped creativity.
Meaning-obsessed, purpose-intoxicated, wholeness-preoccupied, and centrality-infatuated, Saleem has not had an easy childhood. For fear that his “much-trumpeted existence” might prove to be “utterly useless, void, and without the shred of a purpose”, and that he might fail to pay “the immense dividend of greatness” his family expects from him in return for their attentions, Saleem has been striving after pre-ordained meaning since very young (MC 210, 215). Betraying the territoriality or molarity of his frame of mind, the acquisitive obsession with transcendent, hidden meaning gripping Saleem symptomizes the truncation or subjectification of the fluxes of impersonal, productive desire traversing him, which makes of him a slave tacitly acquiescing to the injustices manufactured by the diabolical powers around him. A look at Deleuze and Guattari’s exposition of the concept of “desire” will help to elucidate the statement.
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2.2 Saleem’s Fragmentation and Becoming-Sober
What can be done to deterritorialise the body’s molarised, cramped creativity? The above examination of the first phase of Saleem’s life raises such a question. To reveal the shape of the answer to this question, an exploration of the second phase of his life, namely the last one year or so of his existence as a physically intact person, is necessary. As can be learned, Saleem spends the last one year or so of his life in a pickle factory staffed entirely by women, where he manages the factory for his erstwhile ayah Mary Pareira by day and writes “in a pool of Anglepoised light” mostly in the company of Padma by night. Racing the inexorable crack-up of his body, Saleem eventually produces thirty chapters or, as he frequently puts it, jars of “memories, dreams, ideas” (MC 17, 643). The act of writing, as it turns out, induces subtle changes in him, gradually transforming him from the meaning-obsessed telepathic boy into the man who rather soberly acknowledges that he should never have dreamed of “purpose” and that “privacy, the small individual lives of men, are preferable to all this inflated macrocosmic activity” (MC 608). How does the previously meaning-obsessed Saleem arrive at such a perception? The contrast between Saleem’s writing project and that of his uncle Hanif’s may function as a point of departure for untangling the issue.
英语论文怎么写
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Chapter Three Deterritorialising Territorial Lifestyle in Midnight’s Children ........... 41
3.1 Nostalgic Migrants: The Brass Monkey’s Transformation and Ahmed’s Retreat from Reality ..................... 41
3.2 Future-Oriented Nomads: Tai’s Sober Optimism and Naseem’s Practicality ................... 48
Conclusion ........................... 56
Chapter Three Deterritorialising Territorial Lifestyle in Midnight’s Children
3.1 Nostalgic Migrants: The Brass Monkey’s Transformation and Ahmed’s Retreat from Reality
Midnight’s Children throngs with migrants nostalgic for the reliable, comforting sense of stability or fixity granted by the transcendent plane of organisation which secretly drives the creation of idealised pasts. As reasoned by Deleuze and Guattari, the “migrant” is intermediate between the “sedentary” and the “nomad”: he or she may either come to embrace the life of deterritorialisation, which is the life of the nomad, or fall back into territoriality, which is the life of the sedentary. Interestingly enough, the Deleuzian distinction between the sedentary, the migrant, and the nomad has a close affinity to the different states of being in which Rushdie thinks a migrant might be found. As he observes, the migrant is both in a position productive of “new ways of being human” and likely to retreat behind “the walls of the old culture they have both brought along and left behind” (Imaginary 278; Step 415-416). Whereas Rushdie’s words about the potential productivity of the migrant condition evoke Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the lifestyle of the nomad, his reflections on the reverse side of the migrant condition recall the two philosophers’ description of the life of the sedentary. There are many migrants in Midnight’s Children who, disabled—mostly in the figurative sense of the word—by the challenges of migrancy, wax nostalgic for the often romanticised old culture and thereby tend towards the life of the sedentary. We may address migrants of this kind as “nostalgic migrants”. Why is the migrant so likely to be infected with such basically escapist nostalgia? It is because unlike the nomad who does not depart but instead clings steadfastly to the environment and thus has no past whatsoever, the migrant “leaves behind a milieu that has become amorphous or hostile”, creating a past to which he or she will never be able to return and which is thus open to be idealised, or given a transcendent position. Here it needs to be noted that both Rushdie and Deleuze use the word “migrant” in their respective writings not so much in the literal sense of the word as metaphorically. Indeed, Rushdie even goes so far as to claim that “a metaphor for all humanity” can be derived from the migrant condition (Imaginary 394). The same is true with the way words such as “sedentary”, which becomes a substantive in the context of the Deleuzian philosophy, and “nomad” are used by Deleuze and Guattari.
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Conclusion
Deterritorialisation is key to untangling the entwinements between art, politics, and individual life in Midnight’s Children. This thesis enquires into the novel’s dramatization of the need for deterritorialisation from three perspectives, which are its subversion of arborescent thinking, its interrogation of molarised and cramped creativity, and its dethronement of the territorial lifestyle. Through examining the novel’s materialist re-enactment of the Amritsar massacre, Saleem’s rhizomatic and antigenealogical pedigree, and Mumtaz’s premature devitalisation, the first chapter uncovers the novel’s astute awareness of the need to deterritorialise the transcendent plane of organisation, or the arborescent systems of thought, which are ever sapping the body of its vitality, namely its power to relate to and act upon its co-inhabitants in the world. Scrutinising the contrast between the two distinct phases of Saleem’s life, during which he is characterised by an intoxication with transcendent meaning and a disenchantment with the narrative of transcendence respectively, the second chapter illuminates the novel’s exploration of the need to free up life’s cramped generative potential and its resolution to deterritorialise not only the status quo but also itself in its endeavour to augment the creative potential of the heterogeneous elements it interrelates. The third chapter illustrates the antithesis between migrants nostalgic for transcendent, dichotomous fixity such as Jamila Singer and Ahmed Sinai and one-time future-oriented yet pragmatic nomads like Tai the boatman and Naseem. It clarifies that the novel, in casting the nostalgia for transcendent, dichotomous fixity as extremely debilitating and enacting the creative power of a critically affirmative attitude towards life, identifies the nomadic lifestyle, which is marked by simultaneous optimism for and resistance to the status quo, as the more desirable way to inhabit the world.
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