Begrebet vorden i Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift. En model til udfordringen at fange det flygtige i farten hos og med Søren Kierkegaard

The Concept of Becoming in Concluding Unscientific Postscript

This dissertation offers a model to catch the elusive in flight through a thorough reading of Søren Kierkegaards Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846). It does not take the contemporaries of the author or his sources of inspiration in to consideration, but offers an actualization of what can be learned from the Danish philosopher today. Doing so, I lean on a more up to date capacity on the subject of becoming, namely the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, whose concept “territorialisation” I implement in my analysis of the Postscript. Thus, the central question is how to develop a territorial analysis of the concept of “becoming” in the Postscript and adjust its relevance to an actualised insight in subjectivity, especially the way becoming works as a literary text that shapes its reader. To catch the elusive aspects, the model offers three approaches on the subject following the logical progression from the formal, the existential and finally the signifying aspects of the description of becoming. The latter combines the former two to a sort of mutual synthesis in the prospect of territorial theory. The three approaches do not form a coherent theory, but each forms its own hypothesis. Firstly, that the Postscript is a text in becoming. Secondly, that it is a subject in becoming. Thirdly, and finally, that it is a territory in becoming, a so called territorial assemblage. I substantiate the formal point of view in an initial reading of Either — Or as a prototype [forbillede] for further and closer readings of the images in the Postscript. The territorial montage of the approach is to a certain extend an elaborated image – qualified in the second approach – designating the entire model and its relevance for becoming and subjectivity.
Anticipating both the call of Arne Grøn for a theory of subjectivity and the call of Isak Winkel Holm for a poetological reading of the Postscript the final concluding re-description of the dissertation, formulated in the manner of a territorial analysis, offers a Deleuzian terminology to pronounce the insight in the elusive. Thus, supporting Kierkegaards own efforts to communicate indirectly, the insights in the way becoming functions in the Postscript offers a new term for this experience: becoming-ethical [vorden-etisk]. The term satisfies both, formal, phenomenological and territorial ways to consider the Kierkegaardian subject as described in the Postscript.