Deleuze and Guattari

Deleuze and Guattari refers to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, two French philosophers who wrote a number of works together. The most notable of these is the two volume Capitalism and Schizophrenia, consisting of Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Unhappy with the treatment of Franz Kafka’s work by scholars, Deleuze and the Guattari wrote Kafka: Toward a Theory of Minor Literature in order to dismiss the notion that the only two ways to analyze Kafka were to “[put] him in the nursery—by oedipalizing and relating him to mother-father narratives—or by trying to limit him to theological-metaphysical speculation to the detriment of all the political, ethical, and ideological dimensions that run through his work…” ^[1]. Published in 1975, their book sought to enter Kafka’s works without the unnecessary burden of the type of analysis that relates works to past or existing categories of genre, type, mode, or style. This sort of analysis is related to what Deleuze and Guattari would call the "Major" or dominant literature out of which they see Kafka emerging as a voice of a marginalized, minority people by re-appropriating the major language for his own purposes". They also wrote What is Philosophy? together. Although Capitalism and Schizophrenia is considered a magnum opus for both, they each had distinguished careers independent of each other.

References

1. ^ Bensmaia, Reda. "Foreword: The Kafka Effect." Foreword. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1975. Print.