https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.040
Schizoanalysis and Carnophallogocentrism in Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds
SAMIHA TABASUM
Ph.D. Scholar
Department of English
Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha
tabassumshamiha@gmail.com
Abstract: The Vaster Wilds is a novel produced by the well known American author Lauren Groff and was published in 2023. The paper attempts to study this survivalist work by Groff, in associations with the perspectives and reasoning theories of schizoanalysis and carnophallogocentrism. Groff has crafted an early American captive narrative where her protagonist provides the perfect subject position for the reader to view and analyze the adventurous survivalist stories from a female perspective thereby making her a female version of Robinson Crusoe. The story is set in the winter of 1609 where the lived –experiences of the protagonist who is an orphan servant girl and her escape from a colonial settlement are portrayed in a manner which is both raw and brutal. The book has been previously reviewed, by many insightful perspectives, as a remarkable survivalist account that foreshadows the worries of climate change and the vulnerability of human civilization along with its anxiety. The paper aims to visualize the protagonist as a “desiring machine” (Deleuze & Guattari), a term used by the theoretical perception of Schizoanalysis. There are many instances in the novel where the patriarchal reasoning in the form of carnophallogocentrism can be observed in its extreme level as well. My attempt in this paper is to apply the theoretical frameworks of Schizoanalysis and Carnophallogocentrism to highlight how Groff manages to create a complex and richly rhizomatic female position who at first adheres to Carnophallogocentrism but eventually transforms and embraces new forms of subjectivity and challenges the fixed notions of female identity while blurring the boundaries of expectations. The aim of the paper is to make theoretical observations to study the trauma, vulnerability as well as the complexities of female subject position in association with the concerns of ecosophy, nomadology and rhizomatics of selfhood.
Keywords: Schizoanalysis, Carnophallogocentrism, Identity, Performativity, Subjectivity
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