Published Online:September 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES060924
Author Name:Medha Bakhshi
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:76-90
The paper analyzes Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials through a Deleuze and Guattarian lens, reading it as a utopian imaginary that attempts to provide an alternate vision of the world. Acclaimed to be a path-breaking work, the trilogy transcends traditional genre classification by addressing some existential, philosophical, and metaphysical questions while romancing the young-adult literature genre. It moves effortlessly across the boundaries between past and present, reality and fantasy, and the eminence of the works lie in the conflicts that emerge at these meeting points. Through his iconic work, Pullman attempts to displace the power of the Western metanarrative and suggests his own democratic version of identity formation. He displaces the metanarrative of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and replaces it with the notion of ‘The Republic of Heaven’ placing its roots in a utopian scheme that envisages a society ungoverned by any religious institution, where sexual pleasure, gaining knowledge, and living to the fullest form the basis of good living—a reterritorialized world of freedom and agency. The works have a trenchant poignance in the post-pandemic dystopia and provide solace with their life-affirming alternate vision.
Philip Pullman, in his much acclaimed and celebrated trilogy His Dark Materials (1995- 2000), attempts a breakdown of all the exploitative and oppressive structures of power through a story that celebrates the postmodern condition, signaling the collapse of a Christian metanarrative with its privileged truth to tell.