Submitting to Loving Authority: Wonder Woman’s DeleuzoGuattarian Ethics

Abstract

In this article, I read Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume 1 (2016) through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s philosophy to challenge the superhero comics narrative convention of using violence as the sole means in a hero’s transcendent pursuit of justice. Deleuze and Guattari critique goal-oriented sexuality as a call for different modes of thinking about ethics and interpersonal relations. I apply their insights to superhero comics wherein we find heroes’ aggressive climaxes of physical power that set things right, i.e., back to the way things were. Most heroes are thus goal-oriented, hyper-violent, and conservative; they beat the villains into compliance to return the world to its previous order. Wonder Woman, on the contrary, turns towards what I call the ethics of the caress. She deploys intimate conversation and physical affection as well as espouses vulnerability to thereby transform her interlocutors – whether men or fellow Amazons – into submissive counterparts to “change the world for the better” (Morrison and Paquette 2016).