One Bad Day and the Line of Flight, the Joker's Escape from Order: A Deleuzeoguattarian Reading of Madness and Desire in Batman: The Killing Joke

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Arak University, Faculty of Letters and Languages, Department of English Language and Literature

10.22091/slic.2026.14098.1010

Abstract

Madness, desire, and the dissolution of order are central to Batman: The Killing Joke, a graphic novel that reimagines the Joker’s origin as both tragic and transformative. The present paper examines the representation of madness in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s text through the philosophical framework of French philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly their concepts of deterritorialization, desiring-production, the body without organs, and the line of flight. To explore how the Joker’s psychological and physical transformation resists moral and social structures, this study employs a qualitative, interpretive approach grounded in Deleuzeoguattarian schizoanalysis. The study argues that the Joker’s “one bad day” marks not a descent into insanity but an act of becoming, an escape from the rigid territorialities of identity, reason, and justice that govern Gotham. Batman and the Joker thus emerge as interconnected assemblages in a continuous process of reterritorialization, mirroring the dynamics of order and chaos within late capitalist culture. The results indicate that the comic stages madness not as pathology but as creative resistance, revealing the ethics of desire that underpins Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions on subjectivity, power, and the politics of desire in contemporary graphic narratives.

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Studies in literature and Culture: from Theory to Practice

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 27 May 2026

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