Minor literature and the language of the minorities (by Mehdi Babaei)

Inspired by Kafka’s works, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1983) introduced the term minor literature (or minority literature), defined as a literary production created by a minority using the majority language, as opposed to the literature created by a minority in their own minority language (similar terms are littérature mineure in French, and small/minor literatures). Minor literature, however, seems to be the widely accepted term. Deleuze and Guattari based their work on Kafka, who used the German language for writing his stories when he lived in Prague, the Czech Republic. According to Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature has three characteristics: “the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation” (2003, p. 18). In all its manifestations, literature is an effective representation of these three characteristics. Literature can project a true image of collective expression of a nation, albeit altered, torn, or disturbing. In minor literature, however, what the writer writes is essentially political and even revolutionary (leading to great improvements) – and this is what glorifies it: being minor, while revolutionary in the broader term of literary works.

More so, as aptly described by the author of four novels, Mohsin Hamid, in the August 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine, “In the 21st century, we are all migrants.” The author backs up this statement by saying:

“…None of us is a native of the place we call home. And none of us is a native to this moment in time. We are not native to the instant, already gone, when this sentence began to be written, nor to the instant, also gone, when it began to be read, nor even to this moment, now, which we enter for the first time and which slips away, has slipped away, is irrevocably lost, except from memory…”

How many people today live in a language other than their own language? How many immigrants have forgotten their language or have not yet had a chance to learn it? More importantly, how can an immigrant writer write in the language of the majority and become the revolutionary figure of his own ethnic community? What are the new layers of identifications in the literary production of immigrant literature? Is literature produced by immigrants regarded as a third space (Bhabha, 1994) bridging a me-them cultural duality? And how would this new hybrid identification enhance our understanding of issues of belonging and attachment? Minor literature is about the experiences of immigrants and their children: the minorities. Minor literature, nonetheless, is an issue concerning all of us.