Document Type

Article

Editor

Véronique Lane

Publication Title

Esprit Créateur

Publication Date

Winter 2018

First Page

120

Last Page

134

Issue Number

4

Volume Number

58

Abstract/ Summary

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the most famous French readers of Jack Kerouac, used his works to theorize their key concept of deterritorialization. Québécois readers, on the other hand, pursued the reterritorialization of Kerouac by reframing his writing as embodying the linguistic and cultural tensions experienced by the French Canadian diaspora. While both of these Francophone readings capture important aspects of Kerouac’s oeuvre, this article argues that critics interested in the complexity of Kerouac’s linguistic and cultural identity as a writer would benefit from following Deleuze and Guattari’s rationale to the end, by recognizing the moments of reterritorialization in Kerouac’s works as an intrinsic part of the larger process of deterritorialization that his oeuvre has come to represent.

Version

post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing with all author corrections and edits)

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