How do you make yourself a body without organs? Using Knausgård's My Struggle as an ethical case

Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 1 (12):55-70 (2021)
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Abstract

The concept of “the body without organs” takes up a great part of the oeuvre of Deleuze and Guattari. Yet, it is difficult to answer their question–“How do you make yourself a body without organs?”–or to understand their answer. In this paper I propose that the body without organs is an ethical concept. To support this assertion, I relate, especially, Deleuze’s thought on the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård’s auto-fictive project, My Struggle, suggesting that My Struggle can be read as a body without organs. By doing so, I aim at two things: first, to illustrate a possible application of Deleuze’s ethic, and second, to show how such an ethic may guide us regarding what we ought to do.

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Finn Janning
Copenhagen Business School (PhD)

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References found in this work

Principia Ethica.G. E. Moore - 1903 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 13 (3):7-9.
Nietzsche and Philosophy.Gilles Deleuze & Michael Hardt (eds.) - 1983 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Giving an Account of Oneself.Judith Butler - 2005 - New York: Fordham University Press.
Essays on Deleuze.Daniel W. Smith - 2012 - Edinburgh University Press.

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