Politics, Patriarchs, and Laughter

Abstract

n an influential essay called What is a Minor Literature?, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have asserted that minority discourse can be distinguished from great literature by three features: deterritorialization, an emphasis on politics, and a collective value.' Deterritorialization refers both to writers' positions (outside their homeland and using a language not their own) and to their extreme modes of expression (either excessive and inflated, in the manner of James Joyce, or sparse and intensified, in the manner of Franz Kafka). The emphasis on politics affirms that in a minor literature individual dramas become political rather than Oedipal as in a great literature. Collective value refers to the writer's terrain where utterances reflect a community's usage, rather than being sharply individuated. Deleuze and Guattari's political project as well as their reverse snobbism become evident when they exclaim: Only the minor is great and revolutionary.2 Their reverse snobbism becomes condescending when they affirm that the paucity of talent among the producers of a minor literature enables the latter to have political and collective value. A minor literature without individuated masters, they claim, can be based in a community, and because it is based in a