Diane Beddoes

This thesis addresses the relation between Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze, with reference to women. It argues that Deleuze's "methods" reveal an intensive dyanamic in Kant obscured by readings which concentrate on the molar structures in his thought and that this dynamic is implicated with the deployment by Deleuze (and Guattari) of becoming-woman as a middle line which escapes the rational tribunal. It insists that a philosophy of difference function as a positive elimination of relations to unity, to the subject and to other figures of power in philosophical thought and that Deleuze's oeuvre is a critical and creative engagement with the transformation of philosophical problems and the relation of thinking to history which emerge from this. The other theme, that of women, is addressed through Luce Irigaray's reading of Kant and Rosi Braidotti's reading of becoming-woman. I argue that whilst the former's critique of an uncritically assumed symmetry in Kant's work is effective and well-directed, she becomes caught in her own methodology of jamming, but that there are nonetheless strong and productive directions in her thought, many of which are parallel and/or connected to those of Deleuze and Guattari's becoming-woman. Against Braidotti's interpretation of becoming-woman, I argue that it adopts a molar political strategy and as such does not connect with the force behind this thought. Lastly, this thesis is an argument against bilateral sexual difference, in favour of distributive or 'n-sexes': the title, Breeding Demons connects the theme of demons in Deleuze's writing to the cycles which effect such distributions.