ABSTRACT
Deleuze’s witty comment upon Lawrence’s Apocalypse is an appropriate one from a writer who, with Guattari, makes full use of the image of stratification in his own writing.2 The Nottinghamshire mining community in which Lawrence grew up depended upon the exploitation of carboniferous strata and substrata beneath their feet. Their Christ, in Deleuze’s reading, is a man of coal: ‘C’est du charbon, c’est du Christ’ [It’s coal, it’s Christ] (PR, p. 21). Christ is thus rendered, like coal, a common good to be brought forth, made serviceable, and distributed to all. Moreover, in their responsiveness to the Book of Revelation can be seen an attachment to ‘un sédiment secret’ (PR, p. 20), a hidden seam of revelation with the potential, once uncovered, to transform the spiritual and material landscape.
