Multilingualism as Lingua Franca

James Joyce, Milan Rakovac, and the desiring-machine

Abstract

Bakhtin's understanding of heteroglossia shows us, that a language can neither be a closed system that can be separated from other languages, nor that the border(s) are fluid and have to go crazy every now and then, but that the use of language borders in the sense of monolingualism serves normative verification or obsolete identifications. With the help of the concept desiring-machines by Deleuze and Guattari, in this paper I want to map the polyphonic literature by James Joyce and Milan Rakovac. The concept of heteroglossia should help to reveal possibilities of description that go beyond normative attributions. Desiring machines produce nomadic positions that create a multitude of possibilities, potentially infinite possibilities. This is accompanied by schizo-analysis, which connects different subject positions and eludes the Oedipal capitalist definition of the subject. Subjects are divided by the incisions of desiring machines and are multiplied by them. The selection of subject positions multiplies and potentially reaches infinite possibilities.