Hysterical Deleuze: From Autoscopia to Becoming Woman

This article attempts to highlight the convergence between the terms which become more than the meaning assigned to them, and the body of a woman manifesting the creative process of hysteria. This is undertaken through addressing Gilles Deleuze’s artistic conceptualization of a body without organs. The terms used in the textual and patriarchal form of political articulation offer a limited set of sensations which could be overcome in a counter measure of resistant sensations which do not apply a restraining ‘logic’ of recognition. After a discussion of concepts such as what constitutes a being-woman and a becoming-woman, the article locates hysteria as an element stranger to the being – one capable of obstructing the common sense approach and the organization of different bodies: the physical body, the body of relationship and the body of ideas. The paper concludes with a new Deleuzian meaning for hysteria which challenges the male-centered dogmatism and unmasks the difference art can make in a pure critique of politics.