Literary paradox: Figures of displacement and disguise in Carroll, Kafka, Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Deleuze

This dissertation elaborates a theory of literary paradox, contending that the displacement and disguise of literary figures involves the paradoxical expression of ideas. Such ideas, which express the differences between figures of displacement and disguise, mark an intersection between literature and philosophy. Displacement and disguise are defined in terms of given likenesses that express difference and dissociation, in contrast to theories which presume that given differences or contradictions (in a text or literary system) can be associated to “paradoxically” express metaphorical likeness or unity. Gilles Deleuze provides a theoretical foundation for defining the “idea” in terms of difference that is not abstract but is constituted by the “powers of repetition” within the imagination.;There are four distinctive figures of displacement and disguise investigated in this dissertation, which I define in terms of the description of forms or appearances (perceptual figures), bodily states or dispositions (affective figures), figures of presence and recurrence, and the absence of the figure. I analyze these figures and the paradoxical ideas they express in the literature of Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Maurice Blanchot. I contend that Blanchot radicalizes literary paradox by evacuating the figure of its lived (perceptual and affective) qualities as well as its presence. I conclude by investigating Deleuze’s paradoxes of life and habit with regard to Deleuze’s and Blanchot’s paradoxes of the immemorial and the eternal return. I argue that while Blanchot is uncompromising in his depiction of the unlivable and absent, he elides the qualitative distinctiveness of figures of perception, affect, and presence.