Bruce Baugh (Thompson Rivers)
Let's get Lost – From the Death of the Author to the Disappearance of the Reader: a Deleuzian
Analysis
Deleuze claims that "the only end of writing is life," a non-personal life that is always covered over and
limited by the constraints of identity. One writes, like Kafka, because one is trapped, and there is no
other way out. One reads not to "find oneself" or recognize oneself in the work, but to lose oneself: to
enter into a process of becoming, a "line of flight" that has no end-point or destination. The aim of
reading is to discover the fluxes and intensities that run through a literary work, and to use this "nonpersonal power" to find and to become something new and unforeseen. Writing and reading are
"experiments": experimental encounters between terms and forces that risk everything for the sake of
"a greater health."