Deleuze's Spider, Proust's Narrator

Abstract

Gilles Deleuze's conclusion to Proust et les signes proposes that the Proustian narrator is as blind as a spider. This would seem to amount to a problematization of the theorizing aspect of the novel, of the narrator as theorist, since “theory,” from the Greek theorein, to view, implies the capacity to visualize a problem, to see the outward aspect of an object. I argue by following Deleuze's convoluted thread and comparing his text to references to spiders and blindness in Barthes and in de Man, that Proust's Recherche could be thought of as a machine that fabricates paradoxically blinding theoretical insights. To understand the novel as producing theory not only puts into question the notion of aesthetics as a mode of thought independent from politics and philosophy, it also forecloses any appraisal by the literary critic or philosopher, since novels encompass both form and concept, the visible and the readable.

Keywords:

• Proust
• Deleuze
• Theory
• Spider
• Blindness
• Novel