Diagram for a Transversal, Molecular Feminism? Guattari's Refrain and the Machinic-Feminine in Witkiewicz's The Pragmatists

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Notes

1. See, for example, Félix Guattari, ‘I Have Even Met Happy Drag Queens’ and ‘Becoming-Woman’, trans. from the French by Rachel McComas and Stamos Metzidakis, respectively, in Guattari 1996b:37–9, 40–4. This collection also contains many examples of Guattari's concept of a ‘micropolitics of desire’. See also Guattari 1996a:185–272.

2. As this text is yet to be translated into English, I am using my own translation in the citations that follow. References are to the original French version.

3. Another example would be Guattari's analysis of Terence Malick's Badlands in the interview entitled ‘Cinema Fou’, although his analysis of the relations between the two protagaonists of this film is far more centred on the male character. Guattari, ‘Cinema Fou,’ trans. from the French by David L. Sweet, in Guattari 1996b:167–76.

4. Published in English in Witkiewicz 1992. This collection, The Witkiewicz Reader, also contains examples of Witkiewicz's theatre, painting, photography and works of philosophy, as well as biographical information.

5. Trans. as ‘Ritornellos and Existential Affects’, in Guattari 1996a:158–71.

6. Cf. Félix Guattari, ‘The Unconscious Is Turned towards the Future’, trans. from the French by Jeanine Herman, in Guattari 1996b:225–32.

7. See Witkiewicz's Tropical Madness (Witkiewicz 1972); The Pragmatists is included in this volume on pp. 1–36.

8. See especially The Marriage (Gombrowicz 1986).

9. Witkiewicz himself was a dedicated drug experimenter whose aesthetic theories and practices were intimately related to practices of intoxication. See Witkiewicz, ‘Narcotics: Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine and Ether’, in Witkiewicz 1992:243–68.

10. Perhaps the most notable examples are in Witkiewicz's second novel, Insatiability (Witkiewicz 1996).