Ola Ståhl

Contours and Case Studies for a Dissenting Subjectivity : (or, how to live creatively in a fearful world)

Contours and Case Studies for a Dissenting Subjectivity : (or, how to live creatively in a fearful world)

Kafka and Deleuze/Guattari: Towards a Creative Critical Writing Practice

Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in particular their writing on Franz Kafka, this article stakes out the ground for a creative critical writing practice beyond the confines of literature. Exploring the notion of writing in relation to affect constellations, what causes one to write, and expressions without content, how one begins to write, the argument put forth is that in rethinking the distinction Deleuze and Guattari tend to make between artistic practice and philosophical thought, a space is opened up for transversal lines that may cross between these fields in practices that are creative and critical and involve what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as aesthetic figures as well as conceptual personae. These practices, it is argued, provide a potential link between aesthetics, on the one hand, and ethics and politics, on the other.

Talking/having sex

In issue 17 of the Vertigo comic Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem wakes up in bed with his assistant, Yelena: ‘What happened?’ he asks himself. ‘Well, obviously, I know what happened’. But when she wakes up, Yelena insists – repeatedly – that ‘nothing happened’. ‘I’m sticky’, Spider argues; ‘Something must have happened to make me sticky’. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Nothing. Nothing!’ Yelena reiterates, though, in increasingly large and messy lettering.