Past the Point of No Return: Deterritorialization and Haecceities in M. John Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT:M. John Harrison is often considered one of the most commercially underestimated writers of science fiction and fantasy in the UK since the mid-1960s. This article aims to focus on Harrison's under-recognized contributions to science fiction while focusing on his later work—the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy (2002-2012). Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I will argue that Harrison's trilogy provides a line of flight escaping the binary dichotomies between self and other, one and multiple, and subject and object, guiding us toward our eventual deterritorialization and liberating us from the competitive nature of capitalist realism. This process is certainly not just a celebration of deterritorialization for its own sake, but rather a refusal to allow the complexity of reality to be reduced to a mere reflection of the economic norms of capitalist realism.