A Body Without Organs: Neoliberal Desires, Postfeminist Ideations, and Ideological Schizophrenia in Conversations with Friends

Sally Rooney’s primary concerns are Marxist critiques of neoliberal values related to private property and wealth acquisition in a purely capitalist economy. However, her bourgeois novel form has been contended for perpetuating a postfeminist purview of feminine sensibilities. The research marks a stark departure from these evaluations and establishes that Rooney’s women are self-conscious and constantly pitted against an elaborate structure of kyriarchy. The protagonist of her novel, Frances, becomes the mouthpiece of ideological disillusionment and liminality by existing in a space of constantly ‘becoming’. These illustrations have been substantiated by drawing on the theoretical precepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which promulgate that ‘ideological schizophrenia’ is the only way to transcend the panopticons of the concentric circles of false consciousness permeating the sociocultural milieu of a society. They revert to primal desiring-machines and an affective ‘Body without Organs’ that subverts any form of structural configurations within its loci.