Becoming-Animal: Becoming-Wolf in Wolf Totem

Abstract

Wolf Totem is not a novel which advocates ‘molar’ wolf characteristics such as violence, brutality and bloodthirstiness, and ‘molar’ wolf laws such as the law of the jungle and the law of profiting at others’ expense, but a novel which reveals to readers a brand new life experience, different affects possessed by the ‘molecular’ wolf, and the becoming-wolf of human beings. Becoming-wolf is not to imitate the above-mentioned characteristics of the ‘molar’ wolf, but to see or imagine what affects the ‘molecular’ wolf has, and make the life force or the assumed life force possessed by the ‘molecular’ wolf transverse a person, so that he or she can also have those affects. Becoming-wolf is to find a line of flight between man and wolf, to get rid of all the restraints imposed by the Confucian culture on the law-abiding, abjectly obedient people, and thus regaining the force of the ‘impersonal, inorganic’ life, so as to become different by endless desiring productions, and enhance mankind's power.