Writing as becoming-woman: Deleuzian/Guattarian reading of women’s prose

Abstract

The methodological approach and starting point for this article are the idea of the difference between men and women creators as suggested and discussed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. As Deleuze and Guattari discuss the case of becoming-woman using the example of Virginia Woolf, her creative work is also a subject of reflection. This distinction is also applied to reveal the special case of becoming-woman in the prose of Lithuanian writer Giedra Radvilavičiūtė (b.1960) who has published two books of short stories: The Planned Moments (2004) and Tonight I Will Sleep Near the Wall (2010) and one of literary critique: Persecution of the Texts. One of her essays, The Allure of the Text, was included in the anthology Best European Fiction 2010; in 2012 she was the laureate of the European Union for Literature. The peculiarities of women’s writing are the ability to move at molecular speed; molecular movements presuppose writing as a rhizome: writing in heterogeneous streams. The becoming-woman in writing means the intensity of the speed of movement between the lines, the lines of life and the line in-between life and the text, the ability to include personal experiences. Life is also felt as a very dangerous thing in itself. To become a woman in writing or in life means to have the ability to slice like a knife through everything. This ability of becoming-woman to become a master of simultaneous multiplicity makes a woman writer something of a clairvoyant.

Keywords

• becoming woman
• deleuze and guattari
• giedra radvilavičiūtė
• virginia woolf