Territorializing Modernism: A Deleuzo-Guattarian Reading of Tender Buttons, Nightwood, and The Waves

This examination of Modernist literature uses the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in close readings of three texts with labyrinthine depictions of social production, alienation, and desire. In their work, I argue Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, and Virginia Woolf destabilize building blocks of social-production in a "becoming-minor" of language, temporality, and consciousness. As a result of this continuous production, these Modernist texts illuminate the institutions and ideologies that regulate semiotics, temporal rhythms, and expressions of identity. Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic model of production eliminates hierarchical organization by untethering the production of meaning from a particular regime of signs. This approach is particularly well-suited to Modernist studies, as they both prioritize the subversive flows of life over those that maintain the status quo of ruling regimes. Each chapter of this study also bridges Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophies with more contemporary theory to bring this discussion of Modernist texts into the twenty-first century.