Jack Kerouac’s French, American, and Quebecois Receptions: From Deterritorialization to Reterritorialization

Abstract

Perhaps the most famous French reader of Kerouac in the United States is Gilles Deleuze. Although he made only sporadic references to Kerouac, both in his work with Félix Guattari and on his own, these are well established in Kerouac studies. Marco Abel goes so far as to claim that the French philosopher was "the most insightful among all of Kerouac's commentators," 1 and two recent monographs have analysed Kerouac's works in light of notions developed by Deleuze and Guattari. 2 Yet Deleuze holds Kerouac up as a failure. In his reading, Kerouac seems to represent recuperation and breakdown as much as he does the liberatory project. This article returns to the actual statements Deleuze made about Kerouac's works, not to discount the use of Deleuzian concepts to analyse them, but to clarify the paradox underlying Deleuze's reading of Kerouac and how this paradox exemplifies the reception of Kerouac in France and Quebec. Generally named in lists of writers representing a certain concept or idea, Kerouac is never the object of extended study for Deleuze. His references to Kerouac often resemble one another and consistently characterize him and his works following the same structure. First, Kerouac is categorized as a writer whose oeuvre falls squarely within Anglo-American literature. Second, he is identified as an author whose works typify the 'line of flight'-"a path of mutation […] that releases new powers"-and the creative process of 'deterritorialization' entailed by the line of flight. 3 Third, Kerouac is held up as the paradigmatic example of 'reterritorialization' and of the failure of the line of flight. Both in his work with Félix Guattari and in his dialogues with Claire Parnet, Deleuze classifies Kerouac as belonging to Anglo-American Literature. The most extended reference to Kerouac in Deleuze's work (a paragraph-length appraisal of The Subterraneans (1958)) is in the dialogue entitled "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature," where the French philosopher lays out the central role that Anglo-American literature plays in his own thought. It starts by claiming that literature's most important goal is to "trace a line" and that "the French do not understand this very well": One only discovers worlds through a long, broken flight. Anglo-American literature constantly shows these ruptures, these characters who create their line of flight, who create through a line of flight. Thomas Hardy,