deleuze and guattari

It is really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly: the simple Thing, the Entity, the full Body, the stationary Voyage, Anorexia, cutaneous Vision, Yoga, Krishna, Love, Experimentation. Where psychoanalysis says, "Stop, find your self again," we should say instead, "Let's go further still, we haven't found our BwO [Body without Organs] yet, we haven't sufficiently dismantled our self." Substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It's a question of life and death, youth and old age, sadness and joy. It is where everything is played out. (150-151)

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.

alcott

Being only "a glorious human boy," of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained; hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. But as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. In fact, he rather prided himself on his narrow escapes, and liked to thrill the girls with graphic accounts of his triumphs over wrathful tutors, dignified professors, and vanquished enemies. The "men of my class" were heroes in the eyes of the girls, who never wearied of the exploits of "our fellows," and were frequently allowed to bask in the smiles of these great creatures, when Laurie brought them home with him. (238-239)

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New York: Penguin, 1989.

adams

My father's murder stole my sanity as well as the sanity of my entire family. Our house became a zoo without a keeper. Our mother opened a restaurant and had to work countless hours every week, leaving four children ample time at home to scream and fight in our wild frustration. Toni locked herself in her bedroom for a period of five years and was rarely seen leaving it except to attend Evangelic Baptist Church. I wanted to be more help to my family, but I was too angry, too bitter, and too wild—an animal trapped and gnawing off my own leg to get free from the trap. I couldn't stop feeling my father's eyes upon me. I begged my mother to send me to a military academy for eighth grade; my sould screamed for order. But I was able to find no escape in a uniform; my storm was eternal, and I couldn't run away from myself or my father.

His ghost haunted me in various ways for years: nightmares, fear that kept me sleeping with a gun under my pillow, disapproval I perceived in the eyes of adult men. I would dream of his return, his walking through the door, saying, 'Why haven't you avenged my murder?" it was in the houses of my fellow teenage friends that I was most uncomfortable; I saw my father's disapproval in their fathers' eyes. (17).

Adams, Curtis Dean. "The Relationship." Sticks and Stones and Other Student Essays. 5th ed. Eds. Lawrence Barkley, Rise B. Axelrod, and Charles R. Cooper. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 12-18.

alcott

Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for every one; it keeps us from ennui and mischief; is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion. (117-118)

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New York: Penguin, 1989.