Minor Literature and the Translation of the (M)other

Abstract

This essay argues that the notion of minor literature, so far conceived as a linguistic category, needs to be understood in broader, relational terms. The essay proposes a definition that takes into account the material conditions of literary production. It situates the political contestation inherent to minor literature not only in the choice and use of language, but also in the process of representation itself. Minor literature registers the disparities surrounding literacy and linguistic fluency and binds them into social realities: while laying bare the linguistic and material privileges that sustain the literary and stretching the text’s mimetic potential towards its limits, it uses the distance that separates the text from the world to evoke minorities. My readings of “La filla estrangera” by the Catalan-Amazigh writer Najat El Hachmi and “Night Dancer” by the Igbo-Flemish-American author Chika Unigwe put this relational, material understanding of minor literature to the test. The novels attend to the ways in which our discursive practices render certain languages and identities marginal. Leaning on the notion of translation, the essay shows how this powerful articulation of otherness is necessarily constrained by the gap between what is represented (the subaltern, the oral, the multilingual, the illiterate) and how it can be represented (the written text, the vehicular language).