Cirrus@Austlit

'What I’ve always loved most about reading is the experience. Interpretations or ‘meanings’ are fascinating, but I find the best texts are those that affect me in a variety of ways. I know many (perhaps most) readers feel the same, and many, like me, probably undertook an arts degree majoring in English on the back of their love for the reading experience. Yet I think I’m also safe in saying that a lot of English students likewise found a number of the cultural and textual theories they learned about to be somewhat dissatisfying analytical lenses—lenses that, however interesting, sometimes seemed dryly reductive and didn’t really do justice to texts as aesthetic objects. In the third year of my arts degree, I finally discovered a philosophy that shed some light on what might be happening in me whenever I read, and which revolutionised how I view writing, life and the world. This philosophy was that of French poststructuralist thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.'

 (Introduction)