Minority () is a philosophical concept developed by
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...
and
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...
in their books ''Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature'' (1975), ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' () is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work '' Capitalism and Schizop ...
'' (1980), and elsewhere. In these texts, they criticize the concept of "
majority
A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below.
It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the se ...
". For Deleuze and Guattari, "
becoming-minor(itarian)" is primarily an
ethic
Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
al action, one of the becomings one is
affected by when avoiding "becoming-fascist". They argued further that the concept of a "
people
The term "the people" refers to the public or Common people, common mass of people of a polity. As such it is a concept of human rights law, international law as well as constitutional law, particularly used for claims of popular sovereignty. I ...
", when invoked by subordinate groups or those aligned with them, always refers to a minority, whatever its numerical power might be.
For Deleuze and Guattari the "minor" and "becoming-minority" does not refer to minority groups as described in ordinary language. Minority groups are defined by identities and are thus molar configurations belonging to the majoritarian State machine. (Molar configurations are composed of infinite lines of particles, i.e. lines of becoming.) Deleuze and Guattari's central example here is
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
. Kafka finds himself at home among neither the
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
Jews nor the dominant German and Austria-Hungarian power structure. For him a "people is missing" and his literature sets out to summon that people. Nonetheless, there is a connection between what are ordinarily referred to as "minorities" and Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the minor and becoming-minor. If becoming-minor often occurs in the context of what are ordinarily called
minority group
The term "minority group" has different meanings, depending on the context. According to common usage, it can be defined simply as a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half of a population. Usually a minority g ...
s, then this is because, Deleuze and Guattari argue, becoming-minor is catalyzed by existence in cramped social spaces. The key point not to be missed is that becoming-minor is not related to molar identities, nor is it a politics that seeks representation or recognition of such identities (though Deleuze and Guattari stress that these are worthwhile political ambitions).
The example of
patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term ''patriarchy'' is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in fem ...
provides an illustration of how the concept of "minority" is used: while there may be more women than men numerically, in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, which are sensitive to relations of power, men still constitute the majority whereas women form a minority. Thus the concept of "becoming-minor" converges with that of "becoming-woman" (as they say, "everyone has to 'become-woman', even women..."), "becoming-animal", "becoming-molecular", "becoming-imperceptible" and ultimately, "becoming-revolutionary". Each type of affective becoming marks a new phase of a larger process that Deleuze and Guattari call
deterritorialization
In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a ''territory'', has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the proces ...
.
François Laruelle
François Laruelle (; ; 22 August 1937 – 28 October 2024) was a French philosopher, of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Laruelle began publishing in the early 1970s and had around twenty book-l ...
further develops this concept in the nascent years of his non-philosophical oeuvre. His concept is distinguished from that of Deleuze and Guattari in that minorities are treated from the point of view (so to speak) of minorities and not via an ensemble of (ultimately) reversible becomings that ends up subordinating the minorities to the Authorities in general (the State, History, Sexuality, ...).
[François Laruelle]
''Who Are Minorities, and How Are We To Think Them?
trans. Taylor Adkins Ultimately, in Laruelle's work, the minorities determine the Authorities unilaterally without being determined by them in turn and, as such, escapes from the philosophical and socio-logical significations of the term. In ''Le Principe de minorité'' (1981), he develops the Minority Principle as Unilaterality and then deepens this work in ''A Biography of Ordinary Man: On Authorities and Minorities'' (1985; trans. 2018 by Jessie Hock & Alex Dubilet).
See also
*
Affect (philosophy)
*
Other
*
Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
References
Sources
*
Deleuze, Gilles. 1979. "One Manifesto Less." Trans. Alan Orenstein. ''The Deleuze Reader''. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 204–222. . Also appears in ''Mimesis, Masochism, and Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought''. Ed. Timothy Murray. Trans. Eliane dal Molin and Timothy Murray. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. 239–258. . Trans. from ''Superpositions''. By Gilles Deleuze and
Carmelo Bene
Carmelo Pompilio Realino Antonio Bene (1 September 1937 – 16 March 2002) was an Italian actor, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was an important exponent of the Italian avant-garde theatre and cinema.
In 1968, his movie Our Lady ...
. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
*
Deleuze, Gilles and
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...
. 1972. ''
Anti-Œdipus''. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of ''
Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. 2 vols. 1972–1980. Trans. of ''L'Anti-Oedipe''. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. .
* ---. 1975. ''
Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature''. Trans. Dana Polan. Theory and History of Literature 30. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Trans. of ''Kafka: Pour une littérature mineure''. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. .
* ---. 1980. ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' () is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work '' Capitalism and Schizop ...
''. Trans.
Brian Massumi
Brian Massumi (; born 1956) is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, cultural studies, political theory and philosophy. His work explores the intersection between power, perception, ...
. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of ''
Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. 2 vols. 1972–1980. Trans. of ''Mille Plateaux''. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. .
*
Guattari, Félix. 1984. ''Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics''. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. .
* ---. 1995. ''Chaosophy''. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). .
* ---. 1996. ''Soft Subversions''. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). .
*Laurie, Timothy & Khan, Rimi 2017, 'The Concept of Minority for the Study of Culture', ''Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies'', vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 1–12.
*
Massumi, Brian. 1992. ''A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari''. Swerve editions. Cambridge, USA and London: MIT. .
*Paul Patton, "Deleuze and Democracy", ''Contemporary Political Theory'' (2000) 4:4
{{DEFAULTSORT:Minority (Philosophy)
Concepts in political philosophy
Félix Guattari
Gilles Deleuze