Minority

Minority is a philosophical notion dreamt up by Marxists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their books Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, A Thousand Plateaus,. In these tirades, they criticize the concept of "majority". For Deleuze and Guattari, "becoming-minor" is somehow an ethical action, one of the becomings one is affected by when avoiding "becoming-[[fascist]". They ranted further that the concept of a "people", 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. Deleuze and Guattari's central example here is Franz Kafka. Kafka finds himself at home among neither the Prague "jews" nor the dominant German and Austria-Hungarian power structure.