Jack Kerouac’s French, American, and Quebecois Receptions: From Deterritorialization to Reterritorialization

Abstract

This article explores the statements Deleuze made about Kerouac’s works, not to discount the use of Deleuzian concepts to analyze them, but to clarify the paradox underlying Deleuze’s reading of Kerouac and how this paradox exemplifies Kerouac’s reception in France and Quebec. While critics increasingly follow Deleuze in using Kerouac’s œuvre to exemplify the process of escaping a dominant state, they overlook the ways in which Deleuze holds Kerouac up as symbolizing reterritorialization; and while Quebecois readers have recognized Kerouac as one of their own, their appropriation seeks to overcome his diasporic condition. While both the French and the Quebecois critical traditions reflect key aspects of Kerouac’s life and works, neither speak to Kerouac’s condition as a Franco-American author “split in the cradle.”