Towards Minor Theory

1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindi Katz
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Change Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Production Of Knowledge

In this essay I develop the notion of ‘minor theory’ following the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on Kafka's ‘minor literature’ as a way of reconfiguring the production of knowledge in geography. I will explore the politics of producing theory that is, for example, interstitial with empirical research and social location; of scholarship that self-reflexively interpolates the theories and practices of everyday historical subjects—including, but not restricted to, scholars; and of work that reworks marginality by decomposing the major. I will discuss the ways that by consciously refusing ‘mastery’ in both the academy and its research practices, ‘minor’ research strives to change theory and practice simultaneously, and I will suggest that these practices can be conjoined with the critical and transformative concerns of Marxism, feminism, antiracism, and queer theory to pry apart conventional geographies and produce renegade cartographies of change.

Literature for Minors

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-134
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Minor

Chapter 3 entertains the idea that children’s literature might also be called a literature for minors, and even a minor literature as conceptualized by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Children are legally minors, but adults can be minors too, culturally if not also legally. Such an understanding of children’s literature broadens our sense of its purpose. The chapter begins with Walter Benjamin’s attention to childhood and children’s forms as a baseline for critical thinking about “minors.” It then traces the reception history of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, the Anglophone children’s classic that most closely approaches recognition as theory. Finally, the chapter explores the idea that some children’s literature functions as queer theory for kids, discussing a wide range of texts including A Series of Unfortunate Events. The chapter concludes with a reading of Alison Bechdel’s memoir Are You My Mother?, seemingly for adults but preoccupied with queer childhood.

Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bogard
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Organic Form ◽  
The Subject

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language—it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his words, a “pure effect or event.” With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a “machinics of desire” produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but “anorganic” composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies.

scholarly journals Dlaczego literatura macedońska nie chce być literaturą mniejszą?

2018 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 401-411
Author(s):  
Jolanta Sujecka
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
Minor Literatures ◽  
A Minor

Why does Macedonian literature not want to be a minor literature?The author takes alook at avery interesting and still under-investigated project for creating a Macedonian literature that emerged among the members of what was known as the Macedonian Literary Circle in Sofia 1938–1941, in the context of the concept of “minor literatures” proposed after World War II, in 1975, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The French researchers’ idea appears as aproposal that could build good solutions for the question of the Macedonian Literary Circle’s project being rooted in the Bulgarian linguistic and cultural context, aquestion that is avo­ided by both Macedonian and Bulgarian discourse.Зошто македонската книжевност не сакада биде споредна литература?Во мојата статија анализирам многу интересен проект на македонската литература што го формулираaт членовите на Македонскиот литературен кружок во Софија 1938–1941 воконтекст на концептот за споредни книжевности предлаган од француските истражувачи Жил Делез и Феликс Гуатари Gilles Deleuze, Félixa Guattari во 1975 година. Идејата на француските истражувачи може да биде добро решение на одлаганото од македонскиот и од бугарскиот дискурс прашање за бугарските корени на предлаганиот проект од членовите на Македонскиот литературен кружок.

A literatura afro-americana sob a ótica da tradução

1989 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Idelber Vasconcelos Avelar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Short Story ◽  
English Language ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽  
Major Language ◽  
Recurrent Process ◽  
Shed Light

The article makes use of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of minor literature - i.e. that which is produced by a minority within a major language - to shed light on the displacements imposed by Afro-American writers upon the symbolic tradition they inherit through the English language. By means of an analysis of a short story by Katherine Porter and a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, emphasis is placed on the recurrent process of demetaphorization one finds in African-American texts. Such Processes are shown to entail a theory of translation that highlights difference and contests the authority of the original. O artigo utiliza, a partir de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, o conceito de literatura menor – literatura produzida por uma minoria no interior de uma língua majoritária - para analisar os deslocamentos operados pelos escritores negros americanos na tradição simbólica herdada por eles através da língua inglesa. Por meio de uma leitura de um conto de Katherine Porter e um poema de Paul Laurence Dunbar, enfatiza-se os recorrentes processos de desmetaforização encontrados nos textos afro-americanos. Num momento seguinte, mostra-se que tais processos implicam uma teoria da tradução que privilegia a diferença e contesta a autoridade do original.

Becoming- work

2019 ◽  
pp. 182-199
Author(s):  
Nicholas Owen
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
New Approach

Chapter 11 describes a new approach to adherence. Earlier chapters have examined the various forms of work that social movements do and asked whether and when such work can be pursued conjointly, by adherents as well as constituents. Chapter 11 reverses the question and looks beyond the answers so far given. It asks: what else would the work have to be, in order for it to be possible for adherents and constituents to pursue it conjointly? It defines a sixth approach, beyond the five already discussed in chapter 10—which it terms “becoming- work,” drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It assesses the implication of becoming- work for the older dilemmas of adherence and describes some contemporary and emerging examples of the approach in alter-globalization politics and queer theory.

scholarly journals Mobile Performance and Nomadic Theory: Staging Movement,Thinking Mobility

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Contemporary Performance ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
Physical Displacement ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This essay discusses the nomadic not so much in terms of mobile existence or physical displacement, but primarily in connection with the concept as a type of movement that disturbs the notion of territory, and that is intrinsically related to processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. This particular reading of the nomadic is based on how the concept has been theorized and conceptualized by Gilles Deleuze, partly in close collaboration with Félix Guattari. Their nomadology serves as a lens through which to study territories-in-motion, in connection to (urban) mobile performances and relationships between theory and practice. The essay intends to demonstrate that the enquiry into dispersed and mobilized territories is a productive tool for analyzing movement and mobility in contemporary performance. Firstly, nomadism is presented as a particular attitude, connected to acts of de- and reterritorialization. Secondly, this perspective is employed to explore some of the dispersed territories that form the basis of the ambulatory performance "No Man’s Land" by Dutch director and scenographer Dries Verhoeven. Lastly, the discussion is extended towards a mobile research symposium, Thinking Scenography, which takes scenography itself as an (embod- ied) mode of thought. Here, a nomadic attitude materializes through non-hierarchical, practice-based forms of knowledge production.

A City of Betrayals: Irvine Welsh’s Minor Literature of Leith

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
Julie Briand-Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The City ◽  
Literary Experience

This article examines the representation of the city and communities of Edinburgh in Irvine Welsh’s works, more specifically his Trainspotting saga: Trainspotting (1993), Porno (2002), Skagboys (2012) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018). While Welsh is an integral part of a broader literary tradition of the contemporary urban Scottish novel, which blends together the crime novel genre with the localised concerns of post-industrialism, gripping poverty, Thatcherite austerity, substance abuse and nagging questions of Scottish identity (gender, sexuality, class, nationhood, etc.), his depictions of the former port-town of Leith and its forgotten histories exposes Edinburgh as two distinctly separate and striated communities and geographies: one of opportunity and one of betrayal. Specifically, this essay reads Welsh through the literary, spatial and political theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with regard to Leith’s contentious historical relationship with Edinburgh. In this analysis of Welsh’s Leith as a vernacular, rhizomatic and anti-institutional force, this essay hopes to illustrate how Welsh’s work redirects the popular notions of Scottish national identity and statehood toward a minor literature, a linguistic, political and historical divergence from the dominant Scottish literary experience

O Pequeno e o Grande Emílio: elementos para pensar a pedagogia e a produção de subjetividades

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (39) ◽  
pp. 155-184
Author(s):  
Bruno Gonçalves Borges
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Felix Guattari

O problema que pretende responder este texto pode ser resumido ao questionamento acerca do processo que levou a pedagogia a se tornar uma peça indispensável de uma engenhosa estrutura de produção de subjetividades na era capitalista. Para tanto, esse problema ganha contornos a partir do esboço de um cenário dual, em que há de um lado, um Pequeno Emílio, originário da obra rousseauniana , desprendido do desejo de formulação de um padrão subjetivo, ainda que aspectos de um naturalismo liberal sejam pertinentes a ele; e, de outro, um Grande Emílio, produto de uma “pequena”, mas incessante e, talvez, pretensiosa resposta ao problema do governo de si e dos outros por meio dos usos de uma pedagogia científica e suas variações, encerrada na ideia de formação plena de um corpo social que reduz a multiplicidade aos níveis economicamente produtivos. Ao propor a abordagem em questão, este texto lança mão de uma análise ao estilo esquizo dos filósofos franceses Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari de textos importantes para a filosofia da educação e da própria pedagogia em função de encontrar suporte para os elementos de uma produção subjetiva em curso que passa pela pedagogia.

BACK ON CIRCE'S ISLAND

Ramus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 213-235
Author(s):  
Michiel van Veldhuizen
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Dio Chrysostom ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Physical Degradation

The reception of Circe's island in and through Classical Antiquity has largely focused on the enigmatic sorceress herself. The long literary chain of interpretive topoi—Circe the witch, the whore, the temptress—stretches from Apollonius, Virgil, Ovid, and Dio Chrysostom to Spenser, Calderón, Joyce, Margaret Atwood, and Madeline Miller. Her role as Odysseus’ benefactor, so unmistakable in Homer, is soon forgotten; to Virgil, she is above all dea saeva, (‘the savage goddess’, Aen. 7.19). One distinguishing feature of Circe and her reception is the focus on representation: the enchantment of Circe, as Greta Hawes puts it, is above all a study in allegory. From the moment Circe put a spell on Odysseus’ companions, transforming them into animals in Book 10 of the Odyssey, Circe has invited analogical reasoning, centered on what the transformation from one being into another represents. More often than not, this transformation is interpreted according to a dualist thinking about humans and animals: subjects are transformed from one being into another being, thus representing some moral or physical degradation. This article, by contrast, concentrates on Circe's island through the lens of becoming-animal, the concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the tenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, ‘1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible…’. I explicate the concept of becoming-animal by applying it to a Deleuzian encounter with Circe's island, both in its ancient articulations and in its various receptions, including H.G. Wells's science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.

scholarly journals Becoming Child and Sustainability—The Kindergarten Teacher as Agency Mobiliser for Sustainability through Keeping the Concept of the Child in Play

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5588
Author(s):  
Anita Tvedt Crisostomo ◽  
Anne B. Reinertsen
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Kindergarten Teacher ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Teacher Roles ◽  
Educational Organization ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
And Function ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Power Position

In this article, we seek to theorize the role of the kindergarten teacher as an agency mobiliser for sustainability through keeping the concept of the child in play, ultimately envisioning the child as a knowledgeable and connectable collective. This implies a non-dialectical politics of multiplicity ready to support and join a creative pluralism of educational organization and teacher roles for sustainability. Comprising friction zones between actual and virtual multiplicities that replace discursive productions of educational policies with enfoldedness, relations between bodies and becomings. This changes the power, position and function of language in and for agency and change. Not through making the child a constructivist change-agent through language but through opening up the possibilities for teachers to explore relations between language and matter, nature and culture and what might be produced collectively and individually. We go via the concepts of agencement expanding on the concept of agency, and conceptual personae directing the becoming of the kindergarten teacher. Both concepts informed by the transformational pragmatics of Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix Guattari (1930–1992). The overarching contribution of this article is therefore political and pragmatic and concerns the constitution of subjectivity and transformative citizenships for sustainability in inter- and intra-generational perspectives.

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