Deleuze, Immanence, and Immanent Writing in Qualitative Inquiry: Nonlinear Texts and Being a Traitor to Writing

Abstract

Modernist writing relies on writing elements such as linearity, meaning, plot, internal coherence, subject–predicate relations, structure in general, and identity or fixity. For Deleuze, writing is nonreductive, destabilizes meaning, and undermines a thematic reading. More specifically, it rejects a sense of beginning, middle, and end; subject–object distinctions; subjects who are developed according to a structure; and a sense of identity. Deleuze’s concepts of immanence and the virtual are discussed, and two major forms of Deleuzian writing are then examined. Nonlinear texts are organized in a way that fails to meet the modernist demand for a linear, internally coherent, and unified narrative. Being a traitor to one’s own writing involves writing against any stabilizing sense of identity and against other modernist categories and boundaries. Portions of Blanchot’s story, The Madness of the Day, are used to illustrate each writing strategy, and an illustrative example from my own experience is then presented.