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Deleuze

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Title: Deleuze


1
Deleuze Guattari
  • Minor Literature

2
  • 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.

3
  • The book on Kafka was written between the two
    volumes of Capitalism Schizophrenia, and uses
    many of the concepts from those books.

4
  • 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.

5
  • 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?

6
  • 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.

7
  • 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?

8
  • 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?

9
  • 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.

10
  • 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?

11
  • 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.

12
  • 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).

13
  • 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.

14
  • 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).

15
  • It has 3 characteristics
  • 1. Deterritorialised language
  • 2. Centrality of politics
  • 3. Collective enunciation

16
  • 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?

17
  • 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)

18
  • 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).

19
  • 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).

20
  • 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).

21
  • 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)

22
  • Note, for example, the epigraph to Deleuzes book
    Essays Critical and Clinical (1993)
  • Great books are written in a kind of foreign
    language Proust

23
  • 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

24
  • 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

25
  • 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).

26
  • 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?

27
  • 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).

28
  • 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)

29
  • 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.

30
  • 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

31
  • 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.

32
  • 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)

33
  • 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.

34
  • 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)

35
  • 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).

36
  • 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)

37
  • 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
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