The End(s) of the Canon Minor Writing and Writing of Minorities

        Following in the footsteps of Kafka's minor literature, the emergence of minority literature (Minoritätsliteratur) in Germany challenges again the concept of a "große" (great) literature or the canon.  While Jewish-German literature was written by an upper class minority, the German speaking Jews in Czechoslowakia, "Almancilar" literature or Turkish-German literature is produced by Turkish citizens living in Germany.  The former experienced an ideological displacement, the latter an economic displacement.  In both cases, the German language represents the foreign element connecting them to the dominant culture.

        Deleuze and Guattari claim that the glory of minor literature is "to be the revolutionary force for all literature" (Deleuze 19).  Kafka in his use or presentation of a minor literature has the "possibility of invention" (Deleuze 20) because his situation is that of one being confronted with German, Czech, and Yiddish.  His invention is a non-language, a language that makes no sense as Gregor in the Verwandlung (Metamorphosis) speaks but cannot be understood.  The sounds make no sense anymore.  Only the narrative text can transfer or re-territorialize his sounds into coherence.  It is a kind of music that becomes a vehicle of meaning.  The words itself can only be seen separate.

Ich lebe nur hie und da in einem kleinen Wort, in dessen Umlaut ... ich z.b. auf einen Augenblick meinen unnützen Kopf verliere.  Erster und letzter Buchstabe sind Anfang und Ende meines fischartigen Gefühls" (Tagebücher 60).  

(I live only here and there in a small word in whose vowel ... I lose my useless head for a moment.  The first and last letters are the beginning and end of my fishlike emotion).  

        The sentence "Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams [and] found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin" (Metamorphosis 3) is no metaphor.  "There is no longer man or animal, since each deterriorializes the other, in a conjunction of flux, in a continuum of reversible intensities" (Deleuze 22). The word vermin no longer designates a vermin but has taken on another sense or reality.  

         Barriers are crossed and the subject of enunciation has disappeared.  What Klaus Wagenbach calls the poverty of a language, its deficiencies in its usage by minorities, becomes creativity with a newness and freshness impossible to achieve by the major dominant language which is bound to grammatical rules and societal etiquette.  "Kein Wort fast, das ich schreibe, paßt zum andern, ich höre, wie sich die Konsonanten blechern aneinanderreiben, und die Vokale singen dazu wie Ausstellungsneger" (Tagebücher 27). (Almost every word I write jars up against the next, I hear the consonants rub leadenly against each other and the vowels sing an accompaniment like Negroes in a minstrel show).  Language moves to its extremities or its limits.  The Turkish-German writer, Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, is in search of her "Mutterzunge" (mothertongue) Turkish by way of her "Großvaterzunge" (grandfathertongue) Arabic.  "Zunge hat keine Knochen, wohin man sie dreht, dreht sie sich dorthin" (Mutterzunge 7) (Tongue has no bones, to wherever it is turned, it turns itself towards it).  By using a foreign language (German) where words have no childhood, her search for something lost and unnameable becomes possible.

All literature is probably a version of the apocalypse [...] rooted, no matter what its socio-historical conditions might be, on the fragile border (borderline cases) where identities (subject/object, etc.) do not exist or only barely so - double, fuzzy, heterogeneous, animal, metamorphosed, altered, abject (Kristeva 207). 

        Kristeva's monumental work on the abject addresses the dilemma of the writer, in particular the writer who uses "the language of abjection of which the writer is both subject and victim, witness and topple" (Kristeva 206).  The minority writer always fits into this category because s/he is an exile, a deject, a stray, an excluded who is concerned about where he is before asking who he is.  This is exemplified in Ozdamar's novel Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei (Life is a Caravanserai).  As she states in an interview, life is a place where one finds temporary shelter.  "Das Leben als ein Ort, wo man ein bißchen bleibt und dann wieder weggeht [...] dieses Ankommen, Ausruhen und dann Gehen. Da ist sicher auch der Tod drin in dieser Wahl" (Wierschke 77) (Life as a place where one stays for a short while and then leaves again [...] this arriving, resting and then going. Death certainly plays a role in this choice).  Ozdamar's use of the German language is a process of alienation in its mixture of languages and serves as a metaphor for the formation of new cultural identities.  Language and especially poetic language is the revolutionary vehicle for change because "die Sprache ist der personliche, individuelle Wohnort des Menschen" (Biondi 28) (language is the personal individual habitat of humankind). 

        Thus, territory or place is closely connected to identity which is never homogeneous but always divisible, spread out, fragile, incomplete.  The writer is in constant search for the lost object which Lacan coined as object "a" with the knowledge of its unattainability.  Anything desired therefore can only be a substitute for the real thing.  This knowledge nevertheless opens creativity and allows a fluidity expressible in poetic language.  Minority writing displays in its poverty of language the knowledge of the unattainable.  Gregor Samsa's words or noises as expressions of difference and pain are excruciating even to his own ears, yet within the narrative text a new and more human voice emerges.  Gregor Samsa reveals himself, his 'self', from his animal form.  The characters of Ozdamar's drama "Karagoz" are victims of their migrant situation yet they define themselves not as victims but survivors in their refusal to play out an antagonistic relationship with Germans.  Their new language reflects their new identity and strength.

        Written against and within a dominating literary and cultural tradition the kleine Literatur is structurally and politically related to the situation of the Third World vis-a-vis advanced industrial nations.  Therefore, minority discourse is interconnected with post-colonial discourse.

        Post-colonialism is concerned with the state and condition of former imperial possessions, or colonies, of Western nations since the end of World War II.  As a commodity of the US and Europe, it stands under critical scrutiny since many of the leading theorists come from so-called Second- and Third World countries working as an intellectual elite in First World countries.  Since theory is the product of a particular speaking position, post-colonial theory voices the politics or cultural politics of the marginal.  Its theorists continually must justify the life of the mind as itself a positive kind of political action and see themselves as "culture workers".

        The term post-coloniality covers "all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day" (Ashcroft 2).  Generally speaking, this also includes cultures like the United States or Canada since their relationship with the metropolitan center shaped their culture.  All post-colonial literatures "emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial center" (Ashcroft 2).  The economic role of the United States and its position of power in the world clearly separates it, however, from the concept of post-colonialism that approaches the problem of oppression of one nation or people constructing a discourse of violence to dominate others.  The United States' rejection of the imperial or metropolitan power resulted in taking on the motherland's role of imperialist power itself by further occupying territories as an independent state.

        As Santiago Colas points out, the term post-coloniality is problematic when used for literatures other than Asian and African area studies since the independence movement of Latin America is quite different from the history of the African and Asian ex-colonies.  Even though the former colonies have moved to a more autonomous and independent declaration of their culture in contrast to the period of colonization, economic and social relations have lagged behind if not to say remained unaltered.  This signifies on the one hand a cultural and political change from the former assimilationist tradition of embracing the new dominant culture, on the other hand, however, the economic forces created by the continuum of Western capitalist indoctrination reflect the old power structure of North versus South (or East versus West in Europe) and expose the complexity of culture.  What differentiates Latin American states from other ex-colonies is its historical assimilation process.  India for example was able to fall back on an ancient cultural heritage which despite the colonizing assimilationist process was not annihilated.  Assimilation was only necessary and possible to the degree that the British still felt British and the Indian stayed Indian.  Latin America on the other hand totally assimilated its native population with the Spanish Conquistadores.  There was no rich cultural heritage to fall back on and with independence colonizer, creole, mestizaje, mulatto, and colonized became one.  Thus the concept of culture is quite different in these regions where the growing alienation of the colonizer from the metropolitan center provided "a sense of being other than Spaniards that came from being treated other than Spaniards" (Colas 385).  This "sense of being other" resulted in a quest for an identity which the Latin American countries are still struggling with.

        The phenomenon of cultural independence and economic dependency is a colonial as well as a minority problem.   Minority discourse appropriates certain similarities from post-colonial theory but its ambiguous position in relation to the culture of Third World decolonization signifies a de- and re-territorialization which creates a space that allows an inherent critique of the dominant and minor culture.

        The power relations between dominant and minor culture reflect the relations of colonizer and colonized with a territorial difference.  When Edward Said defines the decolonization process as "the slow and often bitterly disputed recovery of geographical territory" and says that "stunningly, by and large the entire world was decolonized after World War Two" (Said 198), I agree with Colas in that such a generalization of decolonization is not relevant to certain areas, specifically Latin America and the United States.  The latter providing an interesting example of a decolonization that never happened or happened on a quite different scale.  Here the assimilation of the natives, the Native Americans, took a different historical turn since their land was looked upon similar to Latin America since the fifteenth century as a vast no-man's land free for all Whites.  On the other hand the Asian and African colonies that reached independence had been under white imperialist jurisprudence only since the late 18th century.  Thus, Said refers only to the situation of Africa and Asia, in particular India, and as Colas points out this generalization poses a problem for Latin American decolonization as it does within the minority discourse.  Decolonization meant withdrawal of political powers and systems, yet the impossibility to withdraw an ideological system of thoughts and economic dependence has perpetuated certain colonial features which can be found within the minority communities in the dominant society.  Economic needs have replaced the political or religious asylum seekers at the end of the twentieth century.  

        Thus, a declaration of an independent identity within a culture and the creation of a new identity stands in contradiction to economic dependence.  In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek elaborates on the unconscious desire to attain what the dominant society holds in store.  The ensuing disjuncture is often confronted with hybridized identities and theorized by Zizek in his discussion on identity.

        Zizek's notion of ideology is "a kind of reality whose very ontological consistency implies a certain non-knowledge of its participants...as to its essence" (Zizek 21).  The participants choose to be unaware of the disjuncture between dependency and independence.  Post-colonial culture offers this "kind of reality" in its cultural and political status but the subsequent self-worth is an escape from the "traumatic kernel", the denial of the persistent unaltered economic and social dependency.  

        What Zizek calls disjuncture, Bhabha sees as a certain fissure, a necessary 'contradiction' as an internal condition of every identity.  He sees in the performance of hybridity the splitting or doubling of the subject enacted in literature more specifically minority or marginal literature.  The Other's desire marked by ambivalence and antagonism denies a homogenized picture of the Other and thus provides a continuous reflection on the Subject's own ambiguity.  The dependent relationship of Subject and Other, and the interchangeability of Subject and Other is embedded in literature.  

        Minority literature, the voice of the Other, views the Western Subject as its Other and itself as Subject.  Wishing the Other to be more than it is, is that which seems to separate the Subject from the Other, while at the same time it also serves as a connection.  A minority can only be a minority because others are the majority.  The subjects who accept the king "as if the determination of 'being-a-king' were a 'natural' property of the person of a king" (Zizek 25) participate in a social bond and norm.  They accept unquestionably what they need not accept.

        The view minority discourse strives to offer is an acceptance of difference and dichotomies yet viewing them not as opposites placed on an above and below scale but rather as the two ends of the same pole:      

                                Subject

                    Object

becomes          

                                Subject ----------Other.  

Thus, difference as a process of division becomes a process of connection.  Separation is inherent in both graphs.  While the first graph shows the impossibility of any relationship or bonding, the second graph displays the same  antagonistic relationship in its connection.  Multiculturalism as well as equality are concepts that have inherent no possible solution to their antagonistic drives.  The only answer or "only basis for a somewhat bearable relation between the sexes [or cultures] is an acknowledgement of this basic antagonism, this basic impossibility" (Zizek 5).  

        In the Caribbean writer Maryse Conde's words "race does not exist, only culture" (Conde 209) lies the post-colonialist idea that race or gender are constructs which she reads as cultures: the culture of a minority, the culture of women.  For example, negritude referring to a biological and genetic race, is a construct that hides the different cultures it addresses.  The term race is too homogenous and results in reduction and elimination.  

        Culture, however, is something that cannot be defined rationally.  One feels German, Turkish, Mexican because of a particular relationship to oneself, to one's environment, to the rest of the world.  This feeling is nurtured by a particular history and sociology, but there is no directory of how to be a true "Indian, German, etc.."  What became important in the struggle for independence was to be a survivor and not a victim.  A cultural affirmative 'I' has to be supported by an economically strong and independent 'I'.  What we often see nowadays is a cultural affirmative voice which however still is victimized economically and thus demoralized.  The voice of a colonized native speaks for all dependent cultures by recounting its victimized past:

                I existed only insofar as he [Britain] let me                 exist.  It was atrocious.  I became ugly, old,                 coarse, and inferior because he willed me so.  He                 struck me off the map of human beings.  I was a                 non-being, invisible.  More invisible than the                 unseen, who at least have powers that everyone                 fears (Conde 214).  

To be seen and felt not only culturally but economically is the goal of the suppressed.  Minority literature serves as a medium to achieve this goal in its questioning of canonical constructs and cultural values.  

        Minority literature in its marginal position opens up a space where the process of differentiation without hierarchy and opposition is made possible.  It displays a difference or antagonism that is positioned on the same pole at different ends with equal status.  Yet, it is the recognition of the antagonistic forces of the self and the impossibility to find that "true" self or the underlying essence that is needed.  Essence is the true nature, an unconditioned part of the self that lies buried beneath the acquired traits, characteristics, and habitual patterns of ones personality.  Essence is multifaceted and is lost in the social conditioning process and development of a personality.  It is replaced with various identifications or self-consciousness.  The child identifies with one or the other parent, this or that experience, and with all kinds of notions about itself.  The child, and later the adult, believes this structure is its true self.  Yet being dependent on all the identities from the past has build a false sense of identity.  Such an identity relies on acknowledgement and validation from outside.  With the realization of the existence of various identities and an underlying "true" even though unattainable self, the possibility to move beyond narrow confines of cultural hierarchical thinking is given.  The illusion of a possible solution to antagonistic drives is exposed and the only solution is "acknowledgement of basic antagonism, this basic impossibility" (Zizek 5).

        The works of minority writers exemplify the struggle to go beyond the binary confinement of dominant (self) and minority (other) by permitting and exposing antagonistic forces but refusing to act out antagonistic hierarchies and oppositions.

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