Kafka Toward a Minor Literature (Theory & History of Literature): 30 - Softcover

Deleuze, Gilles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816615152 ISBN 13: 9780816615155

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1986

Synopsis

In this classic of critical thought, Deleuze and Guattari challenge conventional interpretations of Kafka’s work. Instead of exploring preexisting categories or literary genres, they propose a concept of “minor literature”―the use of a major language that subverts it from within. Writing as a Jew in Prague, they contend, Kafka made German “take flight on a line of escape” and joyfully became a stranger within it. His work therefore serves as a model for understanding all critical language that must operate within the confines of the dominant language and culture.

About this title

From the Back Cover

In Kafka Deleuze and Guattari free their subject from his (mis)intrepreters. In contrast to traditional readings that see in Kafka's work a case of Oedipalized neurosis or a flight into transcendence, guilt, and subjectivity, Deleuze and Guattari make a case for Kafka as a man of joy, a promoter of radical politics who resisted at every turn submission to frozen hierarchies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816615152
• ISBN 13: 9780816615155
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136