As “Secondary Zone Literature” Author: Yanli HE Affiliat

Title: Rethinking “Minor Literature” and “Small Literature” as “Secondary Zone Literature” Author: Yanli HE① Affiliation: Sichuan University Email: yanlihe scu!edu.cn Abstract: "he aim of this article is to address the limits of the “minor literature” of $illes Deleuze & F)li* Guattari and Pascale Casanova-s “small literature”. mean/hile rethink “minor & small literature” as Michel Ragon-s “secondary zone literature” from three perspectives. Firstly, it will be argued that “minor and small literature” began to lose its theoretical capacity with the advent of globali&ation a#ter the ne/ millennium. which is why scholars like Theo D’haen and David Damrosch tended to move a/ay from the initial ideas of Deleuze. Guattari and Casanova. Secondly, the problems of “minor literature” and “small literature” will be updated. There are three problems with “minor literature”: 1) D & G-s “minor literature”4“litt)rature mineure” is an incorrect translation of Kafka-s work, because 5afka-s original word, “klein”, means “small” in German; 2) The first feature of “minor literature” that “a minority uses a ma9or language in a context outside that language” runs the risk of not only dismissing all literature written by minorities in “minor languages”. but also diminishing the possi1le meanings of the term, “minority”6 and 3) The second and third characteristics of “minor literature”, its “political” and “collective” nature, are unable to explain why only non-European arts, such as African American and Soviet literature, are perceived to be political and collective. In terms of “small literature”. there are t/o problems: a) it fails to explain why countries such as China and India. /hich hardly quali#y as ‘small-, face problems similar to those of “small literature” in the international literary context6 and b) it does not have the ca0acity to explain the literature of minority and marginal groups within a nation or country. Thirdly, “minor and small literature” will be reconsidered as “secondary zone literature”. not only in an attem0t to emphasi&e cultural dynamics and po/er relations based on the visi1ility of various “minor & small” related literary works, but also to demonstrate that literature may be minor or small, but it al/ays has quantitative implications. Hence#orth, in order to solve the limits of “minor and small literature”. it is necessary to back to D & G-s source term. which is Ragon-s “secondary zone literature”. Keywords: Minor Literature, Small Literature, Secondary Zone Literature, Gilles %eleuze. Pascale Casanova. Michel Ragon Word Count: 7,918 ① "he authorCs) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: I would like to thank The National Social Science Fund of China (EForis $roys' Theory of Literature and Art', No. 16CHHII73 1. What is “Minor Literature & “"mall Literature”? “Minor literature” in Gilles Deleuze and F)li* Guattari and the “small literature” of Pascale Casanova are literary terms that have influenced literature scholars /orld/ide! They have not only ins0ired many scholars to find a way to make various literatures or literary periods visible. which would other/ise have been ignored, but also to further develop notions to embrace a larger panoply of literatures than that normally included in standard literary histories, often moving a/ay from Delue&e. $uattari and Casanova-s initial ideas. For e*am0le, David Damrosch-s “minor literature” mainly points to the literature of those countries that are not “members of the controlling body of the United Nations”. as well as that of ancient texts that are hardly found in North American syllabi! Theo D’haen-s take on “minor literature” is based on Dutch literature in Holland and Europe. among others, while Galin Tihanov and Yordan L9uckanov use a mixture of “minor & small literature” to interpret Bulgarian literature! Nevertheless, none of these four scholars point out the problems or limitations of Deleu&e, Guattari or Casanova-s theories, but simply follo/ their o/n tra9ectory, often ignoring the potentially signi8cant diKerence bet/een “minor” and “small” literature! Hence, the purpose of this article is firstly to explain the nature and shortcomings of the notions of Deleuze4$uattari and then closely e*amine the four a#orementioned attem0ts be#ore suggesting ho/ these terms can be used in a contemporary context! %eleuze and Guattari published a book entitled Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure in 1975 and Dana Polan translated it into English in 1986 as Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translating "litt)rature mineure" as “minor literature”! In their book, %eleuze and Guattari suggested that “minor literature” has three basic features, the 8rst of which is its language: “minor literature does not come from a minor language, it is rather that which a minority constructs within a ma9or language”. so that, in minor literature, “language is aKected with a high coeNcient of deterritoriali&ation”C2G3! The second feature is “that everything in them is political”, more precisely, minor literature-s “cram0ed space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to politics”CKafka 17), while the third is “that in it everything takes on a collective value”. because “talent isn-t abundant in a minor literature, there are no possibilities #or an individuated enunciation that would belong to this or that ‘master’ and that could be separated from a collective enunciation”C2@3! %eleuze and Guattari used t/o writers, Fran& Kafka and Leopold von Sacher; Masoch to substantiate the de8nition of “minor literature” and located it on t/o levels! (irstly, “minor literature” is “a political literature of minorities”6 secondly, “/e might as well say that minor literature no longer designates speci8c literature. but the revolutionary conditions for all literature within the heart of what is called great (or established3 literature”(18). Masoch and Kafka shared the same minority identity. Masoch was a Bohemian, who took a strong interest in the social struggle of 33 minorities, such as maids and prostitutes and the Je/s in Poland and Hungary, with a keen eye on their suffering and oppression. There#ore, he wanted to construct “minor literature” based on “decisive political intentions”. Kafka was a Czech Je/ in a situation similar to that of Masoch, so he used the term “minor literature” in relation to “literature that is considered to be minor. for e*am0le, the Je/ish literature of Harsa/ and Prague”C2G3! Pn the other hand, Casanova published La république mondiale des letters in 1999, in which she used the term “petite litt)rature” to discuss the writings of Kafka and Deleu&e and Guattari. In 2004, M. B. DeBevoise translated the book into English as The World Republic of Letters, translating “petite litt)rature” as “small literature”! Casanova had deviated from Deleu&e and Guattari by choosing the term “petite litt)rature”, rather than Deleu&e and Guattari-s "litt)rature mineure”. Casanova gave t/o reasons for her ne/ term! Firstly, since Kafka used the word “klein”, meaning ‘small- in German, he obviously chose “small literature”. not “minor literature” to describe “developments in the nascent Czechoslovakia and Yiddish political and literary movements, which is to say the comple* mechanisms that bring #orth all ne/ national literatures”. According to Casanova. “minor literature”4“litt)rature mineure” is just a term “#ound in a translation by Marthe Robert, another translator of Kafka”! Although Bernard Lortholary called Marthe Robert-s translation “ine*act and tendentious”, it seems that this criti>ue failed to influence Deleuze or Guattari! They simply acce0ted the translation. Secondly, according to Casanova, Deleuze and Guattari adopted a particular and perhaps biased idea of Kafka-s political thinking in t/o ways. On the one hand, %eleuze and Guattari de8ned “minor literature” as a notion that “no longer characteri&es certain literatures”6 rather it points to “the revolutionary conditions of all literature called great (or established3”, and that is the “glory of such literature to be minor”. On the other hand, Deleuze and Guattari “#ail to grasp the content that Kafka actually gave to the notion of politics”6 instead, they “#all back upon an archaic conce0tion of the writer in order to justi#y their position”! More precisely. they “hold that Kafka was political, but only in a prophetic way: he spoke of politics, but only for the future, as i# he foresa/ and described events to come” (Casanova 201), such as (ascism. Stalinism and Americanism! In short, Deleuze and Guattari “created a political and critical catchword, ‘minor literature’ out of the whole cloth and freely attributed” it to Kafka. and the deep reason for this misattribution is proof that “anachronism is a form of literary ethnocentrism used by the center to apply its o/n aesthetic and political categories”(Casanova 203) to the text of small literature! Casanova reverted to Kafka-s original term “small literature”. speci8cally to his idea of emerging national literature in order to avoid Deleu&e and Guttari-s misreading. As a Je/ born in Prague, but writing in German, Kafka had an astute #eeling of his intellectual predicament when he tried to speak for his nation, which had 34 a long history of suKering from “the ma9or political preoccupation throughout the <ustro-Hungarian Em0ire bet/een 1850 and 1918”C7II3! Hence, in his diary on the (irst World War. Kafka tried to “describe small literature with a vie/ to exposing the general mechanisms underlying the emergence of young national literature” (Casanova 198). Follo/ing Kafka, Casanova placed “small literature” as “small countries’ literature”! Mean/hile, Casanova speci8cally identi8ed “small” as “literarily deprived”. She also depicted the characteristics of “small literature” using five keywords: “smallness”, “poverty”, “back/ardness”. “remoteness” and “invisibility”(183).

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