Short piece for Minor Literature[s] Minor Li[s]t

I was delighted to be asked by Minor Literature[s] to suggest a text for an anti-canon of minor literatures.

I was free to interpret the call as I wished. Suggestions of any kind/genre of text were accepted, as were any reason for the nomination — they could be personal favourites, texts that felt the most significant, inspiring or generative, perhaps the one most representative of the what minor literature means to me — no rationale was out of bounds when it came to justifying an inclusion.

"This openness, the refusal, as far as it were possible, to impose restraints and boundaries, seemed fitting to the spirit of the minor, as first outlined by Deleuze and Guattari in their 1975 monograph Kafka: Pour une littérature mineure. They defined minor literature thus:

« The three characteristics of minor literature are the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation. We might as well say that minor no longer designates specific literatures but the revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of what is called great (or established) literature. » (tr. Dana Polen)"

I chose ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ (1939) by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. James E. Irby). You can read my inclusion here: https://minorliteratures.com/2024/09/03/minor-list/