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What is a Minor Literature?
In the work Kafka by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari the authors delve into a reading of Kafka's work. The chapter What is a Minor Literature is dedicated to the the notion of minor literature in relation to oeuvre of the Czech writer. Deleuze and Guattari describe minor literature not as a construction based on a minor language, instead 'it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language. But the first characteristic of minor literature in any case is that in it language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization' (p.16).
The reason why Deleuze and Guattari describe Kafka's work as a minor literature is a two-fold. His birth within a German-speaking Jewish family, and a German education, in the context of the mainly Czech-speaking Prague positions him both within a linguistic and an ethnic minority. Although writing and speaking a major language - German - Kafka is part of the 'deterritoralization of the German population'(p.16); Not unlike emigrants in their new country of residence, Kafka's was a foreign in his hometown, Prague. Beside that foreign condition Kafka decides to take distance from "correct" high German in his writings. Instead Kafka brings to his work the peculiarities and deformations of the German spoke in Prague, 'a deterritorialized language appropriate for strange and minor uses'(p.17)
Deleuze and Guattari resource to the tetra-linguistic model proposed by Henri Gobard to explain Kafka's linguistic entanglement. The model encompasses four language typologies: vernacular, vehicular, referential, and mythical. Vernacular refers to a territorial language, spoke mainly by rural communities; vehicular to the language used in everyday practical and transnational exchanges; referential to the language of culture; and mythical to a religious or spiritual language. The authors ask what is the relation Prague Jews, and consequently Kafka, to those four languages. Czech and Yiddish were vernacular languages, disregarded in an urban scenario, yet Kafka, unlike most Jew, was able to understand and write in Czech, which became important in his relation with Milena Jesenská. German filled both the vehicular and referential language, occupying the same role in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as English in today's world. And Hebrew, was the mythical language, associated with the foundation of Zionism and the state of Israel. Whereas 'vernacular language is here, vehicular language is everywhere, referential language is over there, and mythical language is beyond' (p.23).
The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 'increases the crisis, accentuates everywhere the movements deterritorialization and invites all sorts of complex reterritorializations' (p.24). In this movement Kafka does not opt for a 'reterritorialization through the Czech. Nor towards a hypercultural usage of the German... Nor toward an oral popular Yiddish' (p. 25). Instead he chooses an intermediate route, by bringing Prague's German into his writing, and exploring it beyond its boundaries. '[H]e will tear out of Prague German all the qualities of underdevelopment that it has tried to hide ... He will turn the syntax into a cry that will embrace the rigid syntax of the dried-up German. He will push towards a deterritorialization that will no longer be saved by culture or by myth'(p.26). In other words Kafka places the here of the vernacular language into everywhere of the vehicular language; he casts a language that despite having its roots, encompasses many places, and is not rooted nowhere particularly.
Deleuze and Guattari situate the revolutionary intensity of Kafka's writing in the minor and undefined language Kafka chose to write in. To write in a minor language is a choice, which implies that one is willing to allow his work to have no value, to become nothing. He will be willing, like Kafka was, to write in a language without masters, within which even its creator is a stranger; A language marked by its poverty, with no single define identity. This is the language Kafka explores. It is in it that he 'find[s] points of nonculture or underdevelopment, linguistic Third World zones by which language can escape' (p.27). A linguistic territory has no single center of power neither clear boundaries toward what can and cannot be said(p.26).
In the beginning of the chapter Deleuze and Guattari describe three features of minor literature as being the deterritorialization of language, the political nature of every element, and the collective enunciation. I belief to be in position to better understand what the authors meant with these three features. In the first place, the already mentioned deterritorilized nature of Prague's German, which Kafka adopts and explores as his written language; While being the language of Prague's Jews, it derives from an international vehicular language, yet it is distant from the Czech territoriality (p.16). Secondly, the authors defend that within a minor literature 'everything takes on a collective value'. The lack of talent and the impossibility of virtuosity that results from writing in a new, uncharted minor language, prevents enunciations from being inscribed within the work of a given "master". Such lack of ancestry allows for a minor literature to gain a collective meaning (p.17).on spam Thirdly, they state that while in a major literature individual intrigues join to form a whole, in minor literature every intrigue stands-out on its own, and is political. In this scenario each 'the individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it'(p.17). As an example the authors refer to the family 'triangle' as being attached to other triangles, such as the commercial, economic, bureaucratic, juridical(p.17).on political
other minorities
The decision to become minor, and the consequences that result from such choice, is not cofined to literature. Other major discoursive practices have their own minor languages [Minoritaria + Music, Marcel Swiboda 169, Deleuze Dictionary].
Deleuze and Guattari's definition of minor literature can be summed up as a choice, of a minority, operating within a major language, to indulge in a practice without masters and with a poor vocabolary to work with, constious that such decision might result in a practice which might not be recognized or valued. The consequences of such decision, pointed out by Deleuze and Guattari consist of the deterritorilazation of language, the political meaning embeded into every element, the collective nature of the enunciations, the lack of a central power, as well as the lack of limits as to what can be said.
Not only minor literatures, such as Kafka's can be considered minor languages. X describes how Afro-Amercian musical genres are minor languages operating within the major language of pop music. Other discoursive practices can certainly that can be described as minor: One contemporary discourse that seems to qualify itself as a minor language is spam.
spam, a minor language
At first glance spam also seems to qualify as a minor language. + brief description of spam Those who create it, opted for a practice with no apparent value. So is, that so much of it is created and send out in order for it to have have any success, for any value to result from it. characterized by its poor vocabolary as one can testify by reading a few spam emails, where typos, unortodox uses of English, as well as the wrong indexes (Bloommaert) are common.
results
When one decides upon the use of minor language, the language becomes deterritolized, to the point that one can no longer position it in relation to its origin, to a specific geneology, as we would in a text that came from a specific geografic location and tradition, and which becomes perceptible in the act of reading. Spam on the contrary deterritolizes language to a point where we no longer are able to indicate a geographical origin to what it is written. A very pragmatic explaination for spam's lack of linguistic roots, is the forigness to most spam writers to English. With their origin in places such as XYZ + reference English is either a foreign language, or in the cases of countries such as Nigeria and Ghana where it is official language, its a vernacular language, with high level of rootness. If those regional variations of English were to be used, insead of a Global English they would easily give away the writer's provenance. While in cases where the nationality of both the real-writer and the character who poses as writer this might not be a issiu, often the real and the posing writer's nationility don't match, and in those cases signs regional indicated must be removed from the language, in an attempt to shift from a vernacular to a vehicular English. Another cause for the deterriolization comes from the mode of address of these emails. Although sent in bulk to millions of addresses the mode of address employed is invariably an intimate and direct one. But how can this happen if those who send them do not know the recipent's gender, nationality, social strata, occupation, etc; essentially they know nothing expect one's email address. The fact that the emails are sent to a undiferentiated crowd, and yet they try to make each receiver feel special and lucky to be receiving it, is quite a strong force that forces language to become deterritolize.
Language also becomes a collective enunciation. Since it is no longer inscribed in a lineage of given a "master", or possesses a clear authorship this language is no longer within the real of individual, but collective or authorless authoship. Spam is a very visible example of this collective mode of authorship, where no single author can be point. As a consequence spam becomes a material, prone to appropriation, which happens not only within the circles of spam production, but also in art-world, for whom spam seems an endless and rich sandbox, pergmant with material to appropriate. Within the spam production real we can testify the intense boroughing of materials from one email to email [expand]. Contemporary art create in the last twenty years is filled with examples of spam driven artworks [examples]
The* political dimension* is also quite pronnounced in spam. One of the traces of this underlying political dimension it elicits from the clichés that abound in spam. Authors resort to stereotypes to portrait their posing authors, and reciprocacly have quite a stereotypical vision of westerns [add what previously have written; + Jena Burell] This is a sintome of a larger problem, with the lack of knowledge and preconcieved ideas about the foreign other at its center. The unmesured capilist drive to build a fortune from the exploitaint of others should also be mentioned. The meaning of such unmeasured desire for profit adquires a deeper meaning if we consider the political and economical past of Nigeria, the country to which spam is mostly associated with. [add colonial history, oli boom, corruption of the political elits]
Now that the options that bring spam to be a minor language, as well as the marks of this minor practice on to spam have been outlined one question remains unanswered: Within what major language is spam building its body? My intuitive choice is advertisement. Spam seems to essecially advertisment, written with the aim of perusading their reader to buy the product of service announced. And like in advertisement some times those claims are legitimate, other times not , and their persuasion tactics are not that distinct. Despite that fact there seems to be a significant difference in the way advertisement and spam are perceived. One is seen legitimate and has carte blanche to surround our visual and aural environment anytime and anywhere, whereas spam, just as the handle indicates - originally a brand of canned spiced meat - is distasteful, unsolicited, and deceptive junk that must be kept away from our eyes. Why is there such a differentiated treatment concerning spam and advertising? Where does the difference between the two reside?