Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince (1973) is a metafictional novel that has been deemed by many critics a literary expression of Murdoch’s moral philosophy. However, by adopting different ethical approaches, one can unravel conflicts at the heart of the text that cannot be explained with conventional readings. The present article aims at studying the concepts of love and ethics in this novel based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s poststructuralist thought. Contrary to previous readings, this article argues that, rather than being a purely Platonic love or a destructive experience, the protagonist’s love is schizophrenising and in line with his immanent becoming. Accordingly, when he is finally sentenced to life imprisonment, instead of grappling with ressentiment, he actively and joyfully embraces his fate and becomes a Body without Organs via creating a minoritarian work of fiction.
