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3 - The Fleshly and the Angelic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Katy Masuga
Affiliation:
University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle
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Summary

There is in Miller a strange attraction on the side of the religious, compensated by an aversion no less significant to that which tends toward perfection.

— Georges Bataille, “Miller's Moral”

WHILE RESERVING AN INTEREST in the ideal of which it is a part in order to violate it, minor literature causes the major language to lose its power as an inhibiting force for expression. The major language is a body from which to flee, from which to forge a new language that resists its structural forms, rules and even grammar. In the words of Kafka, Miller's parallel act of concession and defiance in his writing is his “ape-nature” fleeing out of him “head over heels and away” (“A Report to the Academy,” 258). Like Kafka, in Deleuze and Guatarri's analysis, Miller bores the way out by fleeing to the extent of becoming peripheral, becoming childlike, and, like Kafka, by becoming-animal — ultimately, by becoming that which is marginal, always simultaneously provoking, in Miller's words, “the fleshly and the angelic” (Sexus, 227).

Miller uses this expression “the fleshly and the angelic” to refer to the dual nature of the human figure in the text, specifically alluding to a figure in Sexus called Melanie. She sends Miller into a reverie on this division in mankind itself but also, more importantly, on this division in writing which, Miller states, is “[h]uman gestures. All borrowed from the animal and insect worlds” (Nexus, 242).

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2011

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  • The Fleshly and the Angelic
  • Katy Masuga, University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Book: The Secret Violence of Henry Miller
  • Online publication: 12 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781571137647.004
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  • The Fleshly and the Angelic
  • Katy Masuga, University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Book: The Secret Violence of Henry Miller
  • Online publication: 12 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781571137647.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Fleshly and the Angelic
  • Katy Masuga, University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Book: The Secret Violence of Henry Miller
  • Online publication: 12 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781571137647.004
Available formats
×