“What is a Minor Literature?” Midterm

There is no longer man or animal, since each deterritorializes the other,
in a conjunction of flux, in a continuum of reversible intensities. Instead,
it is now a question of a becoming that include the maximum of difference
as a difference of intensity, the crossing of a barrier, a rising or a falling,
a bending or an erecting, an accent on the word. (Deleuze and Guattari 171)

Deleuze and Guattari’s essay seeks to examine “minor literature” within the framework of existing Marxist understandings of power structures at play within society. Due to these pre-existing conditions, the minor author must work within the system constructed by the masses (to a certain extent). In other words, “a minor language doesn’t come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language” (166). The question then becomes, what does a minor literature do to a major language? The answer, to Deleuze and Guattari, is that the minor literature creates “deterritorialization.”
To begin unpacking this effect, it is useful to think of the term “deterritorialize.” Like many critical theory words, it does not seem “real” (for whatever that is worth). And, in fact, it is not in the Oxford Dictionary. Rather, it is meant to draw on anthropological references to territorialization, conquering, and colonization; the authors are building upon societal concepts of destabilization and relating them to literature. The ability of literature to mark, spur, or engender the “crossing of a barrier” is key because by working within the major language, the minor literature becomes revolutionary.
This intentional deterritorialization, destabilization of literature eventually leads to a reterritorialization. The authors push for minor authors to steal the language and make it “vibrate with new intensity,” thereby, appropriating the language that once controlled them, morphing it into something they control. This blending creates a language where one is “a stranger within his own language,” where language represents a “schizophrenic mélange” (175). Even this term, “schizophrenic mélange” acts to destabilize itself; it is a “split mind” within a “jumbled mix.” This destruction and creation pushes language “towards its extremities or its limits”—threatening an apocalyptic entropy (172).
The threat of minor literature goes beyond literature and becomes a political threat. This illustrates the ways in which a minor literature functions: it deterritorializes the major literature and it becomes political and revolutionary. This ability to work in many ways points to a minor literature’s ability “to oppose the oppressed quality of language” by the creation of a “minor music” (175).