A Room of Images: The Subjectivity of Time in Virginia Woolf
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Kuo, Chia-Chen
Abstract
The present Woolfian scholarship reads the real houses and rooms lived by Woolf and the textual ones created by Woolf as places and spatial locations. Nevertheless, in my dissertation, I will use Gilles Deleuze’s theory of time to argue that space is transformed by time and into time when time discloses itself. The time is not the chronological time but the coexistence of the past, the present and the future. As life force, it is encompassing while transforming beings and nonbeings perpetually. Therefore, when time discloses its subjectivity, humans are transformed into non-subjects while space is deterritorialized as any-space-whatever. Although there are numerous ways to perceive the subjectivity of time in different terrains of art, I exemplify cinema and maintain that it provides moments of affect at which spectators are forced to confront time when they are transfixed by and immersed into time.
Apart from elaborating on Bergson’s and Deleuze’s theoretical concepts of time in Introduction, I focus on Mrs. Dalloway in Chapter One and demonstrate that real time is a force of becoming which defies any proportional and conventional divisions. I single out the death of Septimus and read it not only as an important illumination of instructing Clarissa the meaning of life but also as a Deleuzian event which unleashes life force. It is disclosed to the degree that Clarissa’s subjectivity and language are disintegrated while the little room where she is situated is transformed into any-space-whatever. Chapter Two is devoted to discussing how free indirect discourse renders time visible by creating a fourth-person speaker both in cinema and in writing. The indiscernible zone created by such a technique makes us perceive the subjectivity of time. I argue that Woolf uses this writing technique to compose “Time Passes” in To the Lighthouse to the extent that this inter-text is narrated almost from the perspective of time. In this light, the summerhouse of the Ramsays is transformed into time and it is because if free indirect discourse is an approach to simulate a perspective ensuing almost from time by creating a fourth-person speaker, this textual house narrated by this mysterious speaker is merely a facet of time as a zone of indiscernibility. Chapter Three focuses on Orlando in which I demonstrate how Orlando’s body can be read as a body without organs. According to Deleuze, time discloses itself when the actual image is exchanging its own virtual image. In this respect, I maintain that time discloses itself when Orlando is situated in a department store, in her gallery and in her mansion. When Orlando is forced to be transformed into a BwO by involuntarily confronting the exchange process, these spaces where she is located are becoming any-spaces-whatever. Chapter Four tackles “A Haunted House.” I aver that the house is haunted by time when time as the fourth-person speaker lurking inside the house/text articulates itself. By having recourse to Deleuze’s discussion on Samuel Beckett’s language types, I argue that this short story is composed by the language of (time) image in which there are so many irremediable gaps and holes that language stutters. In other words, consonant with the Deleuzian free indirect discourse argued in Chapter Two, the subject matter of Chapter Four also unravels how this textual house is transformed into time when the speaking position is emanating almost from the perspective of time and how language is short circuited by means of it.
To sum up, when we are accustomed to the chronological time, Woolf and Deleuze direct our attention to the disclosure of time in each of their corpuses. They unanimously demonstrate that when time discloses its subjectivity, humans are becoming non-subjects while space is becoming any-space-whatever.
Subjects
Gilles Deleuze
Virginia Woolf
cinema
time-image
becoming
any-space-whatever
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