Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature Volume 30 - Paperback

by Gilles Deleuze (Author), Felix Guattari (Contribution by)

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.

Back Jacket

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.