On Literary Sensation: Deleuze, Language, and Vernacular Writing

Udaya KumarUniversity of Delhi

This paper draws on two strands in Deleuzes writings: while the first takes considerations of language and literature away from a semiological framing, the second foregrounds sensation as distinct from representation in discussions of painting and cinema. Following the lead of Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and the analyses in Cinema II: Time-Image, could we develop an account of the literary sensation? Would this help in moving beyond the familiar critical paradigms of domination, marginality and resistance? Literary criticism, arguably, has all too often assimilated the concept of minor literature into an analytic of marginality. Is a different way of charting the relations between enunciation and power indicated in Deleuzes texts on language and literature? My paper tries to think this question in the context of vernacular literatures in India, by focusing on forms of writing that reveal difficult inhabitations of language both the mother tongue and the bilingual framing of the politics of languages in postcolonial times. Using examples from contemporary Malayalam writing, the paper will aim to track the working of the minor on a level of intensities rather than that of numbers and quantities, and speculate on its politico-aesthetic consequences.