Preeti Puri1 & Shefali2’
1Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Management, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar. Orcid id: 0000-0002-6822-5420. Email: purip@nitj.ac.in
2Assistant Professor, DAV University. Email: shefalibassi1997@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s6n3
Abstract
This article is an attempt to move beyond the conventional binary heuristic of identity to its progressive representation based on multiplicity, difference, and dispersion popularized by the ‘rhizomatic’ theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wall Paper”. It is a cliché belief that multiplicity comprises of numerous units, and these units can be eventually united under one category such as the ages of population. Deleuze and Guattari interrogated such logocentric assumptions, and ‘arborescent root- tree’ model of objectified structures, language, identity and self. This article seeks to trace the voyage of Jane’s identity whose dairy constitutes the story “The Yellow Wall Paper”. Her identity has evoked ramified and conflicting networks of references. Feminists broach that she is caged to be a conventional caring mother; for a Freudian she is a ‘hysteric’ struggling with temporary nervous depression, Lacanian posit that she is a ‘psychotic’ who persistently tries to satisfy the ‘gaze’ of her physician husband John, and for a Deleuzian the moment she fails to bear the burden of capitalism driven ‘bio-power’ and ‘nuclear family’ she becomes a ‘schizo’. The object of study of this article is not Jane’s mind which romanticizes asylums rather the interrelation between ‘bio-power’ and her ‘desire’. The article will portray that Jane’s ‘self’ is evacuated from its fixed position to cherish free form of human interaction, and her identity is not handcuffed by any law, rather it is in a state of constant ‘flux’, in a ceaseless motion of ‘becoming’, it is a ‘rhizome’, facilitating a non- hierarchical network.
Keywords: Body Without Organs, Assemblage, Desiring- Machine, Rhizome