Deleuze

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Deleuze Guattari

• Minor Literature

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• Who was Deleuze (and Guattari)?
• Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) Félix Guattari
  (1930-1992).
• Deleuze wrote many important books on Nietzsche,
  Kant, Spinoza, Proust, Foucault, Cinema, etc.
• Together, they wrote a 2-volume Capitalism and
  Schizophrenia What is Philosophy? and this
  book on Kafka.

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• The book on Kafka was written between the two
  volumes of Capitalism Schizophrenia, and uses
  many of the concepts from those books.

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• Who was Kafka?
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924) a Jewish-German writer
  born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian
  Empire (now Czech Republic).
• Most of his publications were posthumous (after
  his death). The most significant
  Metamorphosis, The Castle, The Trial.

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• As we will see, this position of Kafka (in terms
  of national/religious community and language) is
  a central part of DGs analysis of his writings.
• What is that analysis?

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• The subtitle to their book Toward a Minor
  Literature.
• What is that? Ch.3 tells us in outline.
• First point to note is that a lot of DGs
  thought seems to proceed by contrasting very
  abstract terms/tendencies sometimes these come
  in pairs, sometimes in threes.

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• The first, which structures the book, is this
  idea of a minor literature which is
  contrasted with a major literature.
• And, following this, a minor use of language is
  contrasted with a major use of language.
• How to deal with this high level of abstraction?

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• For example the language (style, forms,
  vocabulary) used by government administrations is
  markedly different from, for example, the
  language used by poor, uneducated city-dwellers.
  One is major, the other is minor.
• But, after all, the govt admin are in a minority
  so, why is that a major language?

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• Because its tendency, and its effect, is one of
  control, uniformity and power.
• Whereas, the minor language is (potentially) a
  language of subversion, splintering, opposition.
• At this initial stage we can already say that a
  minor literature is a literature which is in
  some way oppositional in relation to large-scale
  structures of power and forms of language-use.

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• Another set of abstract oppositions (related to
  the first)
• Territorialization Deterritorialization
  Reterritorialization.
• At a certain level of abstraction, these are
  three processes, three forces which are
  continuously in play in the social field.
• For example?

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• DG speak about the position of Kafka, as a Jew
  in 19th century Prague.
• The primitive, original territoriality of the
  Jews in the empire was in the rural communities
  in which the languages spoken were Czech and
  Yiddish.
• There then occurred a deterritorialisation when
  rural workers migrated to the cities, losing
  their original communities and languages.
• There then follows (potentially) a
  reterritorialisation in which, for example, Jews
  become part of the urban bourgeoisie, speak
  correct German, engage in professional
  employment, etc.

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• We can map the major vs minor distinction
  onto this de- and re-territorialisation
  distinction.
• A minor literature would be one which disrupts
  processes of re-territorialisation (in language,
  community identity, etc).

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• Final Essay Due December 17th (50)
• Submit hard copy to Philosophy Department Main
  Office by 500pm
• Word Limit 2,000-2,500 words
• NB
• The primary philosophical and fictional
  references in this essay MUST be chosen from the
  topics covered since Essay 1 (Lecture 9 22).
• All essays MUST incorporate the discussion of at
  least one literary work.
• It is highly recommended that in your essay you
  refer to more than just the readings listed in
  the Course Outline.
• The range of possible meanings and effects of a
  work of literature are in no way limited by any
  knowledge we may have about the author of the
  work. Discuss this claim with reference to more
  than one philosopher and any fictional narrative
  included in the course.
• 2. Narratives, in other words, provide us with
  opportunities to, among other things, exercise
  our moral powers. Discuss this claim with
  reference to more than one philosopher and any
  fictional narrative included in the course.
• 3. It would be more fruitful to approach works
  of literature as potential transformers of
  individuals, rather than as clarifiers or
  extenders of current moral beliefs. Discuss with
  reference to Foucault and/or Deleuze Guattari,
  and any fictional narrative included in the
  course.

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• So, what is a minor literature?
• A minor literature doesnt come from a minor
  language it is rather that which a minority
  constructs within a major language (16).

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• It has 3 characteristics
• 1. Deterritorialised language
• 2. Centrality of politics
• 3. Collective enunciation

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• Deterritorialized language
• in it language is affected with a high
  coefficient of deterritorialization
• In short, Prague German is a deterritorialized
  language, appropriate for strange and minor uses.
  (This can be compared in another context to what
  Blacks in America today are able to do with the
  English language.) (16)
• Note how widely applicable is this idea?

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• 2. Centrality of politics
• Minor literatureits cramped space forces each
  individual intrigue to connect immediately to
  politicsIn this way the family triangle connects
  to other triangles commercial, economic,
  bureaucratic, juridical that determine its
  values. (17)

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• 3. Collective enunciation
• in it everything takes on a collective
  valueliterature finds itself positively charged
  with the role and function of collective, and
  even revolutionary, enunciation
• this situation allows the writer all the more
  the possibility to express another possible
  community and to forge the means for another
  consciousness and sensibility (17).

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• The literary machine thus becomes the relay for
  a revolutionary machine-to-come, not at all for
  ideological reasons but because the literary
  machine alone is determined to fill the
  conditions of a collective enunciation that is
  lacking elsewhere in this milieu literature is
  the peoples concern (18).

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• The letter K no longer designates a narrator or
  a character but an assemblage that becomes all
  the more machine-like, an agent that becomes all
  the more collective because an individual is
  locked into it in his or her solitude (18).

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• With this tripartite account of minor literature
  deterritorialised language immediacy to
  politics collective utterance, DG can now say
• We might as well say that minor no longer
  designates specific literatures but the
  revolutionary conditions for every literature
  within the heart of what is called great (or
  established) literature. (18)

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• Note, for example, the epigraph to Deleuzes book
  Essays Critical and Clinical (1993)
• Great books are written in a kind of foreign
  language Proust

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• We can also think about this in relation to, for
  example, the following (from Ch.1 of the Kafka
  book)
• While rejecting traditional approaches to Kafka
  which would interpret his writings in terms of
  symbolism, fantasm, etc DG propose a different
  approach

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• We believe only in a Kafka politics that is
  neither imaginary nor symbolic. We believe only
  in one or more Kafka machines that are neither
  structure nor phantasm. We believe only in a
  Kafka experimentation that is without
  interpretation or significance and rests only on
  tests of experience

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• A writer isnt a writer-man he is a
  machine-man, and an experimental man (who thereby
  ceases to be a man in order to become an ape or a
  beetle, or a dog, or mouse, a becoming-animal, a
  becoming-inhuman, since it is actually through
  voice and through sound and through a style that
  one becomes an animal, and certainly through the
  force of sobriety) (p.7).

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• The general significance of this phenomenon of a
  minor literature language is underlined, for
  example by the linguistic situation of many
  people today
• How many people today live in a language that is
  not their own?
• And, how many know poorly the major language
  that they are forced to serve?

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• This is the problem of immigrants, and
  especially of their children, the problem of
  minorities, the problem of a minor literature,
  but also a problem for all of us how to tear a
  minor literature away from its own language,
  allowing it to challenge the language and making
  it follow a sober revolutionary path? How to
  become a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in
  relation to ones own language? (19).

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• What is language?
• each language always implies a
  deterritorialisation of the mouth, the tongue,
  the teeth away from their prinitive
  territoriality in food. (p.19)

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• However, ordinarily, in fact, language
  compensates for its deterritorialisation by a
  reterritorialisation in sense. Ceasing to be the
  organ of one of the senses, it becomes an
  instrument of Sense. (20)
• This ordinary use of language, Deleuze calls
  extensive or representative. For example when
  we use the word dog to extend over all
  instances of dog, to represent an essence of
  dog.

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• One of the things Kafka does is to carry out
  another deterritorialisation of sense in this
  ordinary use.
• For example, through a new deterritorialisation
  of sound the sound or the word that traverses
  this new deterritorialisation no longer belongs
  to a language of sense, even though it derives
  from it, nor is it an organised music or song,
  even though it might appear to be. (21)
• Examples Gregors warbling Josephines
  piping, etc

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• Everywhere, organised music is traversed by a
  line of abolition just as a language of sense
  is traversed by a line of escape in order to
  liberate a living expressive material that speaks
  for itself and has no need of being put into a
  form. (21)
• Line of escape ligne de fuite.

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• The big error, the only error, would be to
  believe that a line of flight consists of fleeing
  life a flight into the imaginary, or into art.
  But to flee fly on the contrary, is to produce
  the real, to create life, to find a weapon.
  (Deleuze, Dialogues, p.60)

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• The line of flight takes us away from an
  extensive use of language
• Now, There is no longer a designation of
  something by a proper name, nor an assignation of
  metaphors by means of a figurative sense. But
  like images, the thing no longer forms anything
  but a sequence of intensive states, a ladder or a
  circuit for intensities
• Note contrast between extensive and intensive use
  of language.

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• We are no longer in the situation of an
  ordinary, rich language where the word dog, for
  example, would directly designate an animal and
  would apply metaphorically to other things (22)
• Rather, Metamorphosis is the contrary of
  metaphor. There is no longer any proper sense or
  figurative sense, but only a distribution of
  states that is part of the range of the word. The
  thing and other things are no longer anything but
  intensities overrun by deterritorialised sound or
  words that are following their line of escape.
  (22)

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• Now, its not that a man is like a beetle, or
  vice versa. Rather, we have a becoming-beetle of
  the man and a becoming-man of the beetle.
• there is a circuit of states that forms a
  mutual becoming, in the heart of a necessarily
  multiple or collective assemblage (p.22).

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• What DG appeal for, through Kafka, is
• Even when major, a language is open to an
  intensive utilisation that makes it take flight
  along creative lines of escape which, no matter
  how slowly, no matter how cautiously, can now
  form an absolute deterritiorialisation. (26)

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• Their slogan Know how to create a
  becoming-minor (27)
• Even philosophy, which for a long time has been
  an official, referential genre, must learn this