Abstract
The Mongolian and Tibetan versions of the 'Enchanted Corpse' cycle of tales (Mong. sidetü kegür-ün üliger; Tib. ro sgrung) provide us with a type of textual laboratory for investigating some of the ideas connected to the concept of 'nomadology' as proposed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychologist Felix Guattari in their ground-breaking study Milles Plateaux (1988). Rather than espousing a 'romantic embrace' of the nomadic worldview, these two scholars-working, paradoxically, largely from written sources-use an elaboration of 'nomadism' not as an implement of ethnographic research but as the linchpin for a critique of the intellectual mechanisms of control inherent within developed societies.
Nonetheless, many of their insights regarding nomadic culture can strike the researcher of these cultures as strangely applicable. A large part of the project of Deleuze and Guattari envisions a 'nomadic literature', in which ceaseless becoming, the absolute unfixedness of identity, and the refrain as territorializing mechanism would be the dominant features.
My goal, then, is to consider an example hailing from an oral-written literature produced under conditions of 'genuinely existing nomadism:' the 'Enchanted Corpse' cycle. Can any of the characteristics that Deleuze and Guattari be deduced, and if so, what larger conclusions can be drawn from this?