The Literary Machine

Behind the “literary machine” is a method for treating sings, one that sees literature as a question for life (both individual and collective). The clinician’s task is helpful for understanding the literary machine and the art of studying the signs it produces:
The doctor does not invent the illness but rather dissociates symptoms that were previously grouped together, and links up others that were dissociated. In short he builds up a profoundly original clinical picture. The history of medicine can therefore be regarded under [. . .] the history of illnesses, which may disappear, become less frequent, reappear or alter their form according to the state of the society and the development of therapeutic methods [and . . .] the history of symptomatology, which sometimes precedes and sometimes follows changes in therapy or in the nature of diseases: symptoms are named, renamed and regrouped in various ways. – Gilles Deleuze
In other words, art produces signs that change and need to be interpreted. But here the doctor does not read the signs to make the illness more a reality but to make it disappear. Life is affirmed. The symptoms are always something and somewhere else. The role of the individual studying literature as a clinician is to look at signs that emit “disorder,” “dissociation,” and “detachment” and see that they are already experimental reconnections, not disconnections, to life. Accordingly, the critic renames and regroups these signs, showing how literature is “producing signs of different orders.” In this way, the literary machine can be seen as producing or generating certain effects, certain signs, by determinable procedures, ones for showing us the ways of experimental living. two from
two
Prompt:
Compose a paper where you examine how a group of signs are being produced and reproduced (over the span of three different sources/texts). We will be going over examples in class.
Instructions:
Have two of your sources be from readings that were assigned in this class. Find at least one quote from each source; each quote will serve as evidence for a claim, a certain “reading of signs.”
A quote may be used to display a ““negative,” “disorderly,” or detached idea of life.
A quote may be used to challenge a regime of signs (e.g., the law is inherently good, orderly, with purpose.)
Have your third source be a text of your choosing, something that you prove to “unrelated-but-related” (Annette, a film about a puppet girl).
This “unrelated-but-related” source/text can be where something concrete, physical, or sensory (a puppet, shattered lamp, stars, singing) helps you look at the production of signs (“waiting before the law”) into uncharted territory (“forgetting and not forgiving” and “not having anyone to love.”)
Rename and regroup these texts in such a way to produce a “sign of a different order:” Kafka’s waiting and Annette’s leaving shows us that the law of independence advocates forgetting over forgiving the family: (Annette: “Now you have nothing to love”; Henry: “Can’t I love you.”; “No, not really, Daddy. It’s sad but it’s true.”)

Last Completed Projects