On Writing a Comparative Literary History: Delocalizing Minor Literatures in European Languages in the Age of ‘Big Data’

Arcadi Arc adia a 201 2018; 8; 53( 53(2): 2): 278–307

César Cé sar Dom Domíng ínguez uez*, *, Gio Giovan vanna na Di Ros Rosari ario, o, and Mat Matteo teo Cia Ciaste stella llardi rdi

On Wr Writ itin ing g a Comp Compar arat ativ ive e Lite Litera rary ry Hi Hist stor ory: y: Deloca Del ocaliz lizing ing Mino Minorr Lit Litera eratur tures es in Eur Europe opean an Lang La ngua uage gess in in th the e Age Age of Big Data ‘

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https://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2018-0028

Abstract: “Minor literature” is an elusive concept in literary scholarship. Its widespread use stands in sharp contrast to the paucity of its theoretical development, Kafka. which is limited to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ’s 1975 seminal book Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure . We cla claim im th that at a co comp mpar arat ativ ivee hi histo story ry of mi mino norr literatures in European languages – a nonexistent project so far – requires three preliminary steps, namely, conceptual clarification, cross-pollination between comparative literary history and the digital humanities, and a bibliometric analysis of the minor-literature constellation. First, conceptual clarification is needed to show, on the one hand, how Deleuze and Guattari ’s arguments on minor literatures significantly differ from those of what they posit as their source (Kafka ’s discussion on kleine Literaturen ) and, on the other hand, the existence of alternative genealogies. Second, by adhering to a Braudelian definition of comparative history, the massive data needed for addressing the production and reception of (minor) literatures in specific social and cultural contexts would immensely benefit from recourse to digital tools. Third, and as an example of approaching conceptual clarification with digital tools, a quantitative study of the minorliterature constellation must be performed using a key tool of international scholarship (the MLA International Bibliography). In the current paper, we may only provide an introductory survey of these three fields and, therefore, the results are tentative tenta tive and further research research is needed. Keywords: bibliometrics, big data, comparative literary history, digital humanities,, minor nities minor litera literature ture

Univers versity ity of San Santia tiago go de Com Compos postel tela, a, Fac Faculty ulty of *Corresponding *Correspon ding autho author: r: César Domí Domíngue nguez, z, Uni Philol Phi lology ogy,, Bur Burgo go das Nac Nación iónss s/n s/nº, º, 157 15782 82 San Santia tiago go de Com Compost postela ela (A Cor Coruña uña), ), Spa Spain, in, email: emai l: cesar. cesar.domin dominguez@u [email protected] sc.es Polit itec ecni nico co di Mi Mila lano no,, De Depa partm rtmen entt of De Desi sign gn,, Bu Buil ildi ding ng B7 B7,, Vi Via a Du Dura rand ndo o 38 38// Giova Gio vanna nna Di Ro Rosar sario, io, Pol A, 20158 Milan Milano, o, Italy, email email:: giova giovanna.di nna.dirosari rosario@poli [email protected] mi.it Polit itecn ecnic ico o di Mi Mila lano, no, De Depa part rtme ment nt of De Desig sign, n, Bu Buil ildi ding ng B7 B7,, Vi Via a Dur Duran ando do 38 38// Matteo Matt eo Ciaste Ciastellar llardi, di, Pol A, 20158 Milan Milano, o, Italy, email email:: matte matteo.ciast o.ciastellard ellardi@poli [email protected] mi.it

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Consider the case of a doctoral student in a comparative literature program who is working on the preliminary stages of her dissertation proposal: she wants to investigate minor literatures, a concept that caught her attention when mentioned in passing in an MA seminar. 1 To get an idea of the field, the student most probab pro bably ly wou would ld turn firs firstt to the MLA Int Intern ernati ationa onall Bib Biblio liogra graphy phy (he (herea reafte fterr MLAIB), for it is a database of scholarly books and articles on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics which has been compiled since 1926 with documents dating back as far as 1881. It contains more than two million records, with updates taking place 9 times per year, and at least 60 languages other than the he English (including minor languages 2) are represented. In short, the MLAIB is t source for experienced researchers (Manuel 94). If the doctoral student had conducted a search of the MLAIB in February, 2018, the general literary topic heading (hereafter GSU) “minor literature” would have yielded 124 citations between 1961 and 2017 in 9 languages (81 in English, 23 in French, 9 in Spanish, 5 in German, and one each in Chinese, Czech, Galician, Japanese, and Polish), including 73 journal articles, 33 book articles, 13 dissertation abstracts, 4 books, and 1 book collection. Confronted with these 124 resources, the doctoral student would have next decided to narrow the search to the monographs. Most probably, she would have started with the dissertations to test the relevance of her topic choice. The 13 abstracts show that the concept of minor literatures literat ures has been applied to geocultural contexts as divers diversee as Algeria Algeria,, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, Martinique, and the (southern) United Uni ted Sta States tes,, wit with h onl only y one the theory ory-ori -orient ented ed stud study y rel relate ated d to Gil Gilles les Del Deleuz euzee (Zamberlin). Of the four books, one expands beyond the abovementioned geoculturall sco tura scope pe to inc includ ludee Ita Italia lian n lite literatu rature re by Som Somali ali wri writer ters. s. Fur Furthe thermo rmore, re, the relevance releva nce of the reference reference to Gilles Deleuze is supported by a search narrowed narrowed to “GSU(‘minor literature ’)” and the subject-author heading “Gilles Deleuze, ” which yields 41 citations, including a 1985 translation into English of Chapter Four of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ’s book entitled Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure (Deleuze and Guattari, “Kafka”). Before delving into Deleuze and Guattari ’s book, the doctoral student might decide that her second step should be to consult reference books such as literary

1 We

would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their many insightful comments and sugges sug gestio tions, ns, whi which ch hel helped ped us to imp improv rovee the man manusc uscrip ript. t. Oth Other er sug sugges gestio tions, ns, how however ever,, wou would ld tak takee this th is pa paper per to too o fa farr af afie ield ld.. 2 “A minor language is impoverished in terms of its numeric weight, spatial distribution, and functi fun ctiona onall pow power. er. On the these se thr three ee gro ground undss man many y min minor or lan langua guage gess beco become me end endang angere ered d lan langua guages ges ” (Bathi (Ba thia a and Rit Ritchi chiee 802 802). ).


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dictionaries and encyclopedias. She would find, to her astonishment, that no reference book includes an entry for “minor literature” except for, on the one hand, collateral mentions (Baßler within the entry “ Kurzprosa”; Cuddon within the entry “rhizome”), and, on the other hand, reference books on Deleuze himself (Bogue, “Minoritarian”; Deleuze 91–114; “The Minor ”; Col Colebr ebrook ook 103 103–23; Marks). From all these data, the doctoral student would conclude, first, that she had found an interesting dissertation topic which requires some conceptual clarification to address the variegated geography dealt with by critics, and, second, that her main theoretical reference should be Deleuze and Guattari ’s book, since their literature ture se pare pa rent ntho hood od of th thee co conc ncep eptt of minor litera seem emss in indi disp sput utab able le so fa far. r.3 However, this would be unfortunately misleading for two reasons. First, the issue at stake is not simply formulating a more precise and unambiguous concept, but reconstructing a conceptual constellation with complex geopolitical and disciplinary genealogies. genea logies. Second, Second, while Deleuze Deleuze and Guatta Guattari ri have certainly provided provided a defin definiition of minor literature upon which much scholarly work has been based, this definition is characteristically distinct from Kafka’s original term kleine Literatur , which these two authors purport to interpret. Thee ai Th aim m of th this is pa pape perr is th thre reef efol old. d. Fi First rst,, th thee co conc ncep eptu tual al pr prob oble lems ms th that at surround the concept of minor literature, both before and after Deleuze and Guattari, Guatt ari, will be discussed. Second, Second, we will provid providee a survey of the relati relationshi onships ps between the digital humanities and comparative literature, for the ultimate goal of our discussion is to reflect on the possibility of a comparative history of minor literatures litera tures in Europ European ean languages, languages, for which the digital humanities humanities may provide new insights. Third, we will apply a bibliometric analysis to what the MLAIB registers as studies on minor literatures. We will move from a first data filtering minor literature using the MLAIB to review its growth and across the concept of minor declin dec linee ove overr tim time, e, its dis distrib tributi ution on and dif diffusi fusion on acco accordi rding ng to lan langua guages, ges, its

The doc doctor toral al stu studen dentt may noti notice ce tha thatt the there re has has been an expon exponent ential ial inc increa rease se in the usag usagee tre trend nd of minor litera sinc ncee th thee ea earl rly y 19 1990 90ss in co coin inci cide dence nce wi with th th thee tr tran ansl slat atio ion n in into to En Engl glis ish h of De Dele leuz uzee literature ture si and Guattari’s book, either partially (Deleuze and Guattari, “Kafka”) or book-length (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature ). As a result of the foundational role of Deleuze and Guattari’s book, which, in turn, transformed Kafka into – as so eloquently put by Marie-Odile Thirouin – “Schutzpatron der minoritören Literaturen, ” we also focus on Kafka ’s coinage and discussion here. However, the discussion on minor literatures has a long previous tradition that may be traced back to, at least, Johann Gottfried Herder ’s 1772 Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache and 1784–1791 Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit . We cannot address this tradition here due to the constraints of space (cf. Biti 118 –32 concerning the Herderian precedent). 3


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sources and subjects, and the dimension of its authors (in terms of participation and co-authorship). 4 It is our contention that a bibliometric analysis of minor literatures may provide a more exact picture of how this topic is dealt with by mainstream scholarship and challenge one of its main claims: that stasis (with the cognate values of localism and provincialism) is the key k ey feature of minor literatures, either in linguistic terms (when defined as literatures written in languages of lesser diffusion), political terms (when defined as revolutionary), or in ethnic terms (when defined defined as minori minority-grou ty-group p writing).

1 Mi Mino norr Li Lite tera ratu ture: re: (M (Mis is)F )Fort ortun unes es of a Co Conc ncep eptt In Dubravka Ugre šić’s novel Ministarstvo boli, the main character and alter ego of Ugrešić – Tanja Lucić, a Croatian exile who teaches former Yugoslav literatures at the University of Amsterdam – is confronted by one of her students, Igor, in the t following terms: “A? Mala književnost ne zaslužuje veliku oporbenu gestu... Don’ t you worry ... ... Nema razloga za strah. Zapravo mi vas je žao. Učiteljica ste malih književnosti, a i one su vam se u posljednje vrijeme ne što stisle.” ( Ministarstvo 251) The English translation by Michael Henry Heim reads as follows: “A minor literature literat ure like ours doesn’t rate an opposition party. No, no, don ’ t worry . I’m just sorry for you. You’re a teacher of minor literatures, small literatures, and even they have shrunken as of late. ” ( Ministry 208) 208) And the Spanish-Castilian translation by Luisa Fernanda Garrido Ramos and Tihomir Pi štelek, in turn, reads as follows: “¿Eh? la literatura menor no merece un gran gesto de resistencia... Don ’ t t you worry ... ... No hay motivo para tener miedo. En realidad, me da pena. Es maestra de literaturas menores, que en los últimos tiempos han encogido aún más. ” ( Ministerio 235) evnost has been identically renNotice how the Croatian phrase mala knji ž evnost minor literat literature ure/litera literatura tura menor , dered der ed in Eng English lish and Spa Spanis nish-C h-Cast astilia ilian n as minor though somehow hesitantly in the case of the English translator as proved by the translation expansion “small literatures” next to “a teacher of minor literatures. ” evnost means And yet mala knji ž evnost means literally ‘small literature.’ So, where does minor / menor come come from? As Heim was a Professor of Slavic Languages at UCLA, Garrido Ramos holds a BA in Yugoslav Literature from the University of Zagreb, and

4 The

rationale for including the concepts kleine Literatur and and minority literature besides minor willl beco become me evi eviden dentt lat later er in Sec Sectio tion n 1. literature wil


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Pištelek holds a BA in German Studies also from the University of Zagreb, is it possible that they use Deleuze and Guattari ’s scholarly lexicon for translation (littérature mineure), whereby mala (small) has been retroactively replaced by manja (minor)? In fact, Deleuze and Guattari, in their Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure, translated Kafka ’s kleine Litera Literatur tur as “minor literature,” rather rather than “small literature, ” which is the literal translation of Kafka ’s concept. The influence of their book has been so overwhelming, as mentioned in the introduction, that it has not only replaced Kafka ’s original concept, but also his discussion of kleine Literaturen , even though they advance ideas that are the exact opposite of those conveyed conveyed by Kafka.5 The example of the way Ugre šić’s concept has been translated shows that considered d to be synon synonymous ymous and, and, at “small literature” and “minor literature ” are considere the same time, not quite so, as Heim ’s translation pair ( minor /small) indicates. This points points to to the need need for for clarify clarifying ing the conce conceptual ptual ambigu ambiguities ities that that surrou surround nd the the littérature mineure. First, we will contrast Kafka’s discuss scholarly coinage of littérature discussion ion on small literatures with Deleuze and Guattari ’s excrescences on minor literatures. Second, we will further the discussion by examining Milan Kundera ’s and Ugrešić’s contributions to the debate. While Kundera ’s approach keeps within the limits of the conventional East-Central European relation between small nations and small litera literatures, tures, Ugrešić adds to this an ironic stance that engages with the shrinking of literatures during post-Yugoslav times. 6 When dealing with small/minor literatures and the foundational role played by Kafka, an important issue that should not be overlooked is how differently Kafka in general and his Tagebücher in in particular, which contain his most interesti es ting ng th thou ough ghts ts on sma small ll li lite tera ratu ture res, s, ha have ve be been en in intro trodu duce ced d in into to di diff ffer eren entt li ling ngui uisti sticc traditions. tradit ions. For the English-speaking English-speaking world world,, Kafka’s Journal is still to this day the Schocken Kafka, an artificial composite as elaborated by Max Brod and translated into English by Joseph Kresh (Volume 1) and Martin Greenberg with the coopera-

5 For

the foundational role of Deleuze and Guattari ’s book, Jadranka Cergol ’s statement is illustrative: “The res resear earche chers rs who fir first st def define ined d the the theore oretic tical al and met method hodolo ologic gical al bas basis is of minority literature were Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their monographic work on Kafka. ” (62) A long tradition previous to Deleuze and Guattari is being overlooked here, as mentioned above. 6 César Domínguez has presented most of what follows here in Section 1 in the seminar “Ultraminor Litera Literature turess” (AC (ACLA, LA, Har Harvar vard d Uni Univer versit sity, y, 17–20 Ma March2016 rch2016)) in a pa pape perr ti titl tled ed “ Kleine, Mineur , Small. On the (Mis)Fortunes of a Concept. ” Veronika Tuckerová also presented in the abovementioned seminar, and her paper resulted in the publication “The Archaeology of Minor Literature. ” Both Bo th aut author horss sha share re the sam samee vie views ws reg regard arding ing the coi coinag nagee by Kaf Kafka ka and the (mis (mis)re )readi ading ng by Del Deleuz euzee and Guatt Guattari. ari.


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tion of Hannah Arendt (Volume 2) in 1948 –1949. In Spanish-Castilian, in contrast, Kafka’s Journal follows the 1990 German critical edition by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller, and Malcolm Pasley and, hence, a version that closely follows Kafka’s Tagebücher notebooks. notebooks. Thiss is a ver Thi very y imp import ortant ant cav caveat eat whe when n disc discussi ussing ng Kaf Kafka ka’s ideas on small liter lit erat atur ures es,, fo for, r, un unlik likee th thee En Engl glish ish tra trans nsla lati tion on,, in wh which ich a pa parti rtial al ve versi rsion on is provided in a single entry, the one for 25 December 1911, in the German original the main discussion on small literatures is split between the entries for 25 and 27 December 1911.7 Furthermore, each linguistic tradition has canonized a distinctive Kafka and, in the case of the passages on kleine Literaturen , a distinctive translation choice and, hence, a distinctive critical understanding. In the Frenchspea sp eakin king g wo world rld,, th thee re read ader er wi will ll be de deal alin ing g wi with th Ma Mart rthe he Ro Robe bert rt ’s transla translation tion (based on Brod ’s 1951 edition), which is a kind of classic of French literature, for it forms part of the Pléiade œuvres complètes. And, more specifically in relation to small literature literatures, s, for the French audien audience ce Kafka wrote wrote in a single entry entry (25 Decem littératures mineures (and not of *littératures petites), a concept used ber 1911) of littératures to introduce the outline of what looks like a future object of research for Kafka: “Schéma pour établir les caractéristiques des littératures mineures ” (Kafka, Journal 183). Similarly to Robert’s French translation replacing Kafka ’s original, Deleuze and Guattari’s study of Kafka’s reflection on kleine Literaturen , which is based in turn on Robert ’s translation, came to replace Kafka ’s actual reflection and consecrated a terminological equivalence between kleine Literaturen and littératures mineures. In fact, for many scholars, Kafka ’s definition of kleine Litera Literaturen turen, which he did not provide, is Deleuze and Guattari ’s definition, which reads as follows: “Une littérature mineure n ’est pas celle d ’une langue mineure, plutôt celle qu’une minorité fait dans une langue majeure. ” ( Kafka 29) In the Englishkleine Litera Literaturen turen and minor minor litera literatures tures are con speaki spe aking ng wor world, ld, the kleine consid sidere ered d equivalent equiv alent thanks to Dana Polan ’s book-length translation of Deleuze and Guattari. In addition to the terminological equivalence and the transfer of Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of littérature mineure to Kafka’s nonexistent definition of kleine Literatur , many scholars have also accepted Deleuze and Guattari ’s three characteristics – “deterritorialisation, ” “politisation,” and “collective value” – as

7 Ronald

Bogue overlooks this critical issue when claiming that “Deleuze and Guattari find inspiration for their theory of minor literature in an extended diary entry of Kafka ’s, dated Decembe Dec emberr 25, 191 1911. 1.” ( Deleuze 92)


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coterminous with Kafka’s three characteristics as listed in his scheme – Lebhaftigkeit (liveliness), (liveliness), Entlastung (less (less constraint), and Popularität (popularity). (popularity). While some similarities in the second and third characteristics may be possible, the Literaturen turen and Deleuze and Guattari ’s distin dis tinctiv ctivee loca locatio tions ns of Kaf Kafka ka’s kleine Litera littératures littéra tures mineu mineures res make the these se sim simila ilariti rities es exc exclusi lusivel vely y nom nomina inall and and,, con consesequently, arbitrary.8 For Kafka, key examples of small literatures are “contemporary Jewish literature in Warsaw ” and “contemporary Czech literature ” (Kafka, The Diaries 191), the former expressed in Yiddish and the latter in Czech, literatures which obviously do not qualify as constructed by a minority “within a major language” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 16). Deleuze and Guattari ’s erasure of Kafka ’s kleine and identification of littératures mineures with the ‘revolutionary ’ work of a minority within a major language involves several other conceptual manipulations by these authors. Pascale Casanova has gathered these manipulations under the label of a “double anachronism,” the anachronism of considering Kafka as “prophet and seer, capable of divining and anno announcing uncing events to come ” on the one hand and, on the other, the anachronism of “identifying politics with revolution ” (204).9 We cannot delve here into all of Deleuze and Guattari ’s conceptual manipulations. 10 Suffice to say

Kafka cla Kafka claims ims tha thatt in sma small ll lit litera eratur tures es “liter literary ary events” are ack acknow nowled ledged ged as “obj object ectss of pol politi itical cal solicitude” (The Diaries 192), which which may may be read in relati relation on to Deleuze Deleuze and Guattar Guattarii ’s politization, whereas Kafka’s second feature – the lack of “outst outstandin anding g talen talents ts ” (192) – may be read in relation to Del Deleuz euzee and Gua Guatta ttari ri’s rea reason sonss for the col collect lective ive val values ues of min minor or lit litera eratur tures. es. 9 Casanova’s discussion of minor literatures is a telling example of what can be termed “hyperlocalisation,” the stasis of minor litera literatures tures:: “The pol politi itical cal dep depend endenc encee of emer emergin ging g lit litera erary ry spa spaces ces is sig signal nalled led by the rec recour ourse se to a fun functi ctiona onalis listt aes aesthe thetic tic and and,, tak taking ing the cri criter teria ia of lit litera erary ry modern mod ernity ity as a sta standa ndard rd of meas measure uremen ment, t, the mos mostt con conser servat vative ive nar narrat rative ive,, nov noveli elisti stic, c, and poe poetic tical al forms.” (Casan (Casanova ova 199) 10 Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari ’s argument on minor literatures as deployed in Kafka antici ant icipat pates es the imp import ortant ant cha chapte pters rs on lit litera eratur turee in the their ir 198 1980 0 Mille Plateaux (especi (especially ally the plate plateau au Novemb ember er 20, 192 19233”), as we well ll as in De Dele leuz uzee’s 19 1979 79 “Un ma mani nife fest stee de mo moin ins, s,” an and d hi hiss 19 1993 93 Critique “Nov et Clinique (ch. 1). Due to the constraints of space, we cannot delve into these connections here. It suffices to say that the basics remain unchanged. There are neither major nor minor languages, “but two possible treatments of the same language ” (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 103). Hence minor languages are not “simply sublanguages, idiolects and dialects, but potential agents of the major language ’s entering into a becoming-minoritarian of all of its dimensions and elements” (106). The task of literature is precisely to open up “a kind of foreign language within language, which is neither another language nor a rediscovered patois, but a becoming-other of langua lan guage, ge, a min minori orisat sation ion of thi thiss maj major or lan langua guage ge ” (Deleuze, Critique 5). Our arg argume ument nt tha thatt Del Deleuz euzee and Guattari, whose interpretation is indebted to the much-questioned “triple ghetto” theory of Prague German literature (cf. Tuckerová 441 –446), disregard literature in Yiddish produced in Warsaw Warsa w and literature literature in Czech still holds. Chana Kronfeld argues that “Deleuze and Guattari ’s narrative [...] denies not only the links between his [Kafka ’s] work and the textual practices of 8


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that, unlike their geography of littératures mineures, which closely coincides with the postcolonial world, Kafka ’s could be also a developmental developmental rather than exclusively a geographical concept, meaning that his notion of kleine Literatur represents a literary literary stage as well – the emergence of a literature (cf. Domínguez). 11 Due to some of the characteristics Kafka attributes to kleine Literaturen and to the fact that Czech literature is one of the examples he provides, such a literary stage has been conventionally introduced within the telos of nationalization. Casanova, for instance, claims that “Politisation in national or nationalist form [...] is one of the constitutive features of small literatures ” (189). Such a telos is also supported by Kundera in his 1993 essay “The Unloved Child of the Family, ” in which, following Kafka ’s steps – though using musicians instead of writers – describes the heavy load small nations impose upon their artists. It is the load of the undivided loyalty to the tribe, which results in a hyper-representation of the small nation and the exclusion of those artists who do not comply with this requirement. Unlike Kafka, who focuses on the process and, therefore, in the kleine Literatur as as a stage that may be outgrown, Kundera ’s view is pessimistic, tragic, inasmuch as, on the one hand, the small nations ’ impositions go beyond verbal languages and affect also a “supranational language ” (187) such as music, and, on the other hand, they describe “a destiny ” (190) in which cosmopolitan write wr iters rs,, wh when en no nott an anni nihi hila late ted d as an “unl unlove oved d son son,,” are humili humiliated ated with “maternal indulgence” (194). A further step in the reflection on the national dimension of small/minor literatures is taken by Ugre šić in her 2000 essay “A Short Contribution to the History of a National Literature. ” In the quote from Ugre šić’s The Ministry of Pain which was included at the beginning of Section 1, Igor reminded Tanja of a key issue that is usually overlooked by a professor of (post)Yugoslav literatures – that of their being small. In Ugre šić’s essay, such a further step may be termed as renationalization, for she describes the emergence of Croatian literature out of

Hebrew and Yiddish literature but also “the very possibility of producing such oppositional litera lit eratur tures es in the non non-ma -major jor lan langua guages ges.. ” 11 It is unquestionable that Deleuze and Guattari ’s construction of the category of “minor literature” is, as Jean-Jacques Lecercle put it, a “creative misprision, a strong reading that ‘forces’ the text” (59), and yet an interpretation from which a valid theory of literature has evolved. The issu is suee at st stak ake, e, ho howe weve ver, r, is to de deci cide de wh whet ethe herr th thee co conc ncep epts ts an and d th thes eses es en enfo forc rced ed in Ka Kafk fka a ’s te text xtss ar aree acceptable accepta ble or not. Claiming, Claiming, for example, that “Kafka’s situation is analogous to that of Indian writers who must choose between their regional, Indian tongues and a pan-Indian, bureaucratic English” (Bogue, “Minor Writing” 105) as a result of the postcolonial geography implied by Deleuze and Guattari (a creative work from within imperial languages) is undoubtedly a false anal an alog ogy y ba base sed d on a la lack ck of kn know owle ledg dgee of Ka Kafk fka a ’s lan langua guages ges (cf. Nek Nekula ula). ).


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Yugoslav literatures in post-Yugoslav times. Ugre šić’s stance is deeply ironic. Being an exile from Franjo Tu đman’s Croatia and excluded from the new canon of Croatian literature, Ugre šić’s approach to Croatian literature as small literature is clearly indebted to Kundera ’s pessimistic description, and not to Deleuze and Guattari’s revolutionary overtones. Small literatures ’ contributions are not internationally acknowledged due to their “inaccessible languages,” says Kundera (191), a seclusion which in the case of post-Yugoslav literatures is secured thanks to the the asserti assertion on of of distin distinctive ctive langua languages ges by by what Ugrešić calls the “Committees for the Defense of National Substance ” (“Short Contribution ” 116). Furthermore, as a result of the “ vertical axis” (121) of renationalized small literatures, on the one hand, writers are requested to be the “moral conscience of their nation” (121), and, on the other, when such tribal loyalty is proven, no matter what the intrinsic quality of their works, they are considered “a moral rock,” “a giant in spirit,” “a Croatian titan, ” so no “national” writer in Croatia “has a problem with low selfconfidence” (120). Despite the overwhelming influence of Deleuze and Guattari ’s elaboration of littératures mineures, a reading of Kafka’s original reflections on kleine Literaturen shows that both concepts are not only distinct, 12 but at odds with one another due to their different nature – in Kafka’s case, the concept is developmental qua literary stage, in Deleuze and Guattari ’s case, the concept is connected to revolutionary aims in relation to the invention of a “people to come ” (le peuple à venir ), ),13 which has been restrictively identified with the geography of the postcolonial

12 Galin

Tihanov further asserts this distinctiveness in an essay (provocatively?) entitled “Do ‘Minor Literatures ’ Still Exist? ” Tihanov distinguishes between minoritäre Literatur – “the writing of a minority within a dominant majority ” along the lines of Deleuze and Guattari – and kleine Literatur – “an evaluative notion that sees ‘minor literatures’ as small [...], derivative, deprived of origin ori ginali ality ty whe when n mea measur sured ed by the yar yardst dstick ick of ‘mainstream literatures’” (169–170) within a tradition tradi tion that may be traced back to Herder Herder,, as mentio mentioned ned above. Furthermore, Furthermore, Tihanov argues that “the axiological discrimination between ‘small’ and ‘great,’ ‘minor’ and ‘major’ literatures becomess increa become increasingl singly y unten untenable able” (186) and therefore “the very very concept concept of ‘minor literatures’ is an historical histo rical construct with a specif specific ic (limit (limited) ed) life-s life-span pan” (169). (169). Despit Despitee the initi initial al disti distinction nction between minoritäre Literatur and and kleine Literatur , both concepts become conflated again, though we assume Tihanov predicates the untenability exclusively for kleine Literatur : “the distinction between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ literatures was the outcome of an era of thriving national traditions and strong nation states ” (187). Besides the fact that in Tihanov ’s argumentation, the category of minoritäre minor itäre Lite Literatu ratur r is st kleinee Lite Literatu ratur r is al stil illl te tena nabl ble, e, we fu furt rthe herr cl clai aim m th that at th thee ca cate tego gory ry of klein also so st stil illl tenable, for it is not a matter of structural-functional properties, as contended by the Herderian tradit tra dition ion,, but a mat matter ter of pow power er rel relati ations ons.. 13 “Becoming-minoritarian as the universal figure of consciousness is called autonomy. It is certainly not by using a minor language as a dialect, by regionalising or ghettoising, that one becomess revol become revolution utionary; ary; rather rather,, by using using a number number of minorit minority y elemen elements, ts, by conne connecting cting,, conjugatconjugat-



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world. Kundera ’s and Ugrešić’s contributions to the debate, in turn, are closer to Kafka’s coinage and arguments rather than to Deleuze and Guattari ’s. Furthermore, both Kundera and Ugre šić see close links between small literatures and the national telos. 14 And yet, such an interpretation only seems to be valid for some of the characteristics listed by Kafka and his example of Czech literature. But, what about “contemporary Jewish literature [meaning, literature in Yiddish] in Warsaw ”? Is Yiddish literature an example of an emerging national literature on an equal footing with Czech literature? Or, on the contrary, is Kafka ’s aim to indicate that both are exemplary kleine Literaturen, but for different reasons? To answer this question question goes beyon beyond d the scope of this essay.

2 Di Digi gital tal Hu Huma manit nitie iess an and d Co Comp mpara arati tive ve Li Lite terat ratur ure e The solidification of “the Digital Humanities” (hereafter DH) as a term referring to an academic field took place in 2004 with a collection of essays published as a Companion Compa nion by Blackwell Blackwell (Jones (Jones 4). Paradoxica Paradoxically, lly, this collect collection ion does not provide provide a concise definition of the field. For the purposes of this essay it may be relevant to turn to a definition of DH included in another Blackwell Companion, this time devoted to comparative literature (hereafter CL). “Digital Humanities is an umbrella term for a wide array of interdisciplinary practices for creating, applying, interpreting, interrogating, and hacking both new and old information technologies,” Todd Presner Presner conte contends nds (195–196). In our search for the cross-pollination of CL and DH, the solidification date of the latter (2004) pushes us to look for interactions in the last decennial report of the American Comparative Literature Association (hereafter ACLA), inasmuch as no DH textbook seems to be interested in CL (the previous report, called the “Saussy Report, ” was published in 2004). The 2017 ACLA Report (Heise et al.) includes a section titled “Media” in which four essays (Pressman; Tenen; Abel; Heise) out of the seven address DH issues. Of them, Ursula K. Heise’s interview with Franco Moretti stands out, for his work not only represents the most groundbreaking one in DH as applied to literary studies during the last 10 years, but More Mo rett ttii al also so an antic ticip ipat ates es wh what at he se sees es as fu futu ture re possi possibi bilit litie iess fo forr CL in th thee en enco coun unte terr

ing them, one invents a specific, unforeseen, autonomous becoming. ” (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Thous and Plate Plateaus aus 106) meanin ning g a gro group up of int interre errelat lated ed 14 This is what we call the minor-literature minor-literature constellation, mea concepts, including minor literature, small literature (kleine Literatur ), ), and minority literature, whic wh ich h wi will ll be th thee ob obje ject ct of a bi bibl blio iomet metri ricc an anal alys ysis is in Se Sect ctio ion n 3.


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with DH. In terms of the encounters between both fields during the last 10 years, Moretti greatly regrets that computational criticism has focused almost exclusive si vely ly on En Engli glish sh co corp rpor ora a (M (Mor oret etti ti in He Heise ise,, “Compa Comparative rative Litera Literature ture” 273). Furthermore, he adds that he was convinced that DH “would, indeed, change our historical histor ical knowle knowledge, dge,” but “the gathering [of historical results] has been very poor so far, very slim ” (273). His “naïve hope” was that DH “would bring into the history of literature a change comparable to that of the Annales. That hasn’t happened ” (275, 276). As for the future possibilities, Moretti singles out four: 1) neurosciences becoming an “invaluable ally of studies of reading ”; 2) macroregional studies, which have “nothing to do, of course, with area studies ”; 3) nonliterary archives as “a really important test case for what we can contribute in terms of the analysis of cultures ”; and 4) “rethinking the meaning of the past ” (277, 281, 282, 283). Of Moretti’s diagnosis, three issues are especially relevant for our purposes, namely, the overcoming of Anglo-monolingualism, macroregional studies, and rethinking the meaning of the past. It is necessary to take into consideration now a more full-fleshed map of DH ’s recent history and future under the light of an unavoidable fact – it still will take some time to have scholars in the humanities in general and in CL in particular trained in DH (Wilkens 19). As for DH ’s recent history, Matthew Wilkens claims – in terms of the pollination of literary studies (not exactly CL) by DH – that that th thee us usee of co comp mput utat atio iona nall me meth thod odss ha hass be been en restricted to three areas: text mining, network analysis and literary sociology, and clustering and mapping. And as for DH ’s future, Presner envisions – in terms of the pollination of DH by CL – three futures: comparative media studies, comparative data studies, and comparative authorship and and platform studies. In terms of this cross-pollination map, the next question that deserves to be addr ad dres esse sed d is: Wh Wher eree do does es th thee com compa para rativ tivee di dime mens nsio ion n li lie? e? A po possi ssibl blee an answ swer er is th that at thee co th comp mpar arat ativ ivee di dime mens nsio ion n lie liess in th thee ob obje ject ct of stu study dy,, in th thee ma mate teri rial ality ity.. CL ne need edss to face fa ce th that at,, in co cont ntra rast st to th thee ov over erwh whel elmi ming ng ro role le pl play ayed ed by th thee pr prin int, t, “the burgeo burgeoning ning field fie ld of ele electro ctronic nic lite literatu rature re” wil willl nec necess essita itate te a rec reconc oncept eptual ualiza izatio tion n of the disc discipl ipline ine practices (Presner 195), for now the emerging object of study, electronic literature, is “comparative literature. It operates across machine and human languages, requiring translation of these languages before it even reaches the human reader ” (Pre (P ressm ssman an 24 248) 8).. A se secon cond d po possi ssibl blee an answe swerr is th that at th thee co comp mpar arat ativ ivee di dime mens nsio ion n li lies es in the corpora, either literary or nonliterary. As Moretti regrets, here Anglo-monolingualism rules. And a third possible answer is that the comparative dimension lies in th thee in inve vesti stiga gatio tion n to be ca carri rried ed ou outt as ba base sed d up upon on co corp rpor ora/ a/da data ta.. Moretti’s pu publ blis ishe hed d re rese sear arch ch be betw twee een n 199 19977 ( Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900) and 2013 ( Distant Reading ) provides outstanding examples of the application of computational criticism to multilingual corpora aimed at compara-


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tive analysis in two of Wilkens ’s three areas – network analysis and literary sociology and clustering and mapping. Multilingualism is inherent either to the literary corpus (mainly novels in English and French in the Atlas, for examp example) le) or the nonliterary corpus (distant reading of the rise of the novel in Britain, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria in Graphs, Maps, Trees ). This line – both multilingual and comparative – has been continued within only one of the abovementioned areas (network analysis and literary sociology) by Richard Jean So and Hoyt Long’s research on modernist literary networks in the United States, Japan, and China.. Other examples China examples provided provided by Wilkens for text mining, mining, network analy analysis sis and literary sociology and clustering and mapping are based exclusively on Anglomonolingual corpora. At this stage we need to take a step back to ask: What is the place for Big Data (hereafter BD) in this landscape? The first academic reference to BD dates back to Franci Fra nciss X. Diebold’s 20 2000 00 pr pres esen enta tati tion on at th thee Ei Eigh ghth th Wo World rld Co Cong ngre ress ss of th thee Econometric Society in Seattle, in which the term names “the explosion in the quanti qua ntity ty (an (and d som someti etimes mes,, qua quality lity)) of ava availa ilable ble and pot potent ential ially ly rel releva evant nt dat data, a, [which is] largely the result of recent and unprecedented advancements in data recording and storage technology ” (115). Either a subfield of computer science, statistics and x -metrics -metrics or a discipline in itself (as Diebold claims), what needs to be stressed here is that the debate about the place this subfield/discipline should have in DH research and, more specifically, in the encounter between CL and DH is merely merely at its infan infancy. cy. In th thee la latt tter er ca case se,, we ha have ve on only ly on onee de desc scri ript ptiv ivee ap appr proa oach ch by Jo Jona nath than an E. Abel, who, on the grounds of Masuda Yoneji ’s The Information Society as Post-Industrial (1981 81)) an and d Isa Isaac ac Asi Asimo mov v ’s Foundation (1 (1951 951), ), wa warn rnss ab abou outt “our con contem tempor por-Society (19 ary ar y in inte tere rest st in bi big g da data ta” for “our fet fetish ish too oft often en den denies ies the imp import ortanc ancee of ind indivi ividua duall or ra rand ndom om po possi ssibi bili litie tiess in fa favo vorr of te tend nden enci cies es” (2 (268 68), ), a war arni ning ng to add to th thee li list st of caveats against Moretti’s distant reading. More helpful is Frédéric Kaplan ’s representation of BD research as a structured research field within DH. Kaplan presents BD-D BD -DH H re rese sear arch ch as th thre reee co conc ncen entri tricc cir circle cles: s: 1) re rese sear arch ch fo focu cusi sing ng on pr proc oces essin sing g an and d interpreting big and networked cultural data sets; 2) understanding the relation betwe be tween en da data ta pr proc oces essin sing g an and d in inte terp rpre reta tati tion on as oc occu curri rring ng in “a la larg rger er co cont ntex extt of th thee new digital culture characterised by collective discourses, large community, ubiquitous software, and global IT actors ”; and 3) the human experience through physica phy sicall int interf erface aces, s, web website sitess and ins instal tallat lation ionss of big cul cultur tural al dat data. a. To sum up, then, the encounter between DH and CL has mainly developed within the areas of network analysis and literary sociology and clustering and mapping according to mainstream literature, to which we add here research carried out with BD, more specifically, scientometrics. Based on the seminal work by Derek J. De Solla Price, scientometrics has been defined defined by David J. He Hess ss as th thee


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quantitative study of science, communication in science, and science policy ” (75). We claim that scientometrics as applied to literary studies may contribute to the development of what Presner envisions as one of the three futures of DH as pollinated by CL-comparative data studies (hereafter CDS). CDS allows to “use the computational tools of cultural analytics to enhance literary scholarship precisely by creating models, visualisations, maps, and semantic webs of data that are simply too large to read or comprehend using unaided human faculties ” (Presner 202). Alon Al ong g th thee li line ness of Mo More rett ttii’s rec recogn ognitio ition n tha thatt his stu study dy of mor morpho phologi logical cal evolution has transformed into the analysis of quantitative data ( Distant Reading 179), scientometrics scientometrics represents not only another form of quant quantitativ itativee data analysis, but one com comple plemen mentar tary y to thi thiss mor morpho phologi logical cal ana analys lysis is (Fe (Ferre rrer, r, “Digital Humanities” 4). It is an emerging research field as applied to the humanities because it was considered until recently that scientometrics methods cannot be used due to the differences in terms of citation with hard sciences (cf. Larivière et al.).15 The landscape of cross-collaboration between DH and comparative literary history – our focus here – is somehow lumped in with the cross-collaboration with CL in general, but it has started to boom in the last five years. To our knowledge, there are only three such cases – Marcel Cornis-Pope ’s 2014 comparative history and Matthew L. Jockers’s and Ted Underwood ’s 2013 methodology monographs. Cornis-Pope’s comparative history materializes the comparative dimension in terms of both the object of study and perspective (translingual, international, European), and represents the first work to focus on DH within the series of “A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. ” In this work DH – a concept that, tellingly, is not used – should be exclusively understood as the materiality proper of electronic literature. The volume is organized around four sections: 1) “Multimedia productions in theoretical and historical perspective ”; 2) “Regional and intercultural projects ”; 3) “Forms and genres ”; and 4) “Readers and rewriters in multimedia environments. ” The overarching aim of these four sections is acknowledging that “if the humanities are to retain their fundamental role in an increasingly interdisciplin interdisciplinary, ary, media-driven media-driven world, they must [...] start from the recognition that the traditional objects of advanced study in the huma“

Thiss vi view ew ha hass be been en se seri riou ousl sly y ch chal alle leng nged ed in th thee la last st fe few w ye year arss bo both th in th thee hu huma mani niti ties es in ge gene nera rall 15 Thi (Linmans) (Linma ns) and in lit litera erary ry stu studie diess in par partic ticula ularr (cf. Fer Ferrer rer,, “Digital Digital Humani Humanities ties”; “El can canon on literario”; an and d “Le Pr Prix ix No Nobel bel..”)


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nities and the arts have changed significantly significantly during the past forty to fifty years” (Cornis-Pope, “General Introduction” 8). Underwood (16) claims in his monograph on periodization that the introduction of quantitative methods in literary history “opens up new ways of characterising isin g gra gradua duall cha change nge,,” somet somethi hing ng th that at is no nott el elab abor orat ated ed un unti till hi hiss la last st bo book ok chapter. By drawing on a collection of 4,275 English-language (!) volumes covering the period from 1700 to 1899, a study of broad changes in 18 th- and 19thcentury diction is carried out, which reveals that “by the end of the nineteenth century there’s a gulf between diction in different genres that had not previously existed. Moreover, this appears to be a broad differentiation between literary and non-literary diction.” (168) This kind of evidence challenges the traditional attribution of a causal role to literary movements (in this case, Romanticism), which rather participate in broader discursive trends. “Trends of this kind,” Underwood adds, “play out on a scale that literary scholars aren ’t accustomed to describing, and it may take decades for us to figure out how to describe them.” (169) Finally, Jockers’s monograph on the application of digital tools to literary history is the broadest in scope, for in it he advocates the need of macroanalysis (distant reading) and microanalysis (close reading) working in tandem in order to inform our understanding of the literary record. The basic difference between both bot h app approa roache chess is tha thatt mac macroa roanal nalysi ysiss “rev reveal ealss det detail ailss abo about ut text textss tha thatt are are,, prac pr actic tical ally ly sp spea eakin king, g, un unav avai aila labl blee to cl clos osee re read ader erss of th thee te texts xts” (26). Macroa Macroanalysi nalysiss (including subareas such as author gender analysis, author nationality analysis, collocate studies, computational authorship attribution, influence network, stylistic-thematic data matrix analysis, topic modeling, etc.) results in a contextualization on an unprecedented scale. Interestingly, Jockers links such contextualization to the approaches taken by the Annales historians (19, 27), whose model Moretti hoped would bring a change in literary history. It is therefore consequential that we adopt here a Braudelian definition of comparative literary history: Comparativ arativee litera literary ry histor history y is a [...] collaborative collaborative interdisciplinary interdisciplinary study of the “Comp production and reception of literatures in specific social and cultural contexts [...]. [C]omparative literary history examines literature as a process of cultural communication within one language area or among a number of them without attempting to minimise cultural diversity. ” (Valdés 75) We wan wantt to fost foster er a ref reflec lection tion on the future future pos possibi sibiliti lities es of com compar parati ative ve literary history in the age of BD. With Valdés ’s defini definition tion of compa comparative rative literary history in the background, our coordinates are: 1) CDS in terms of scientometrics applied to bibliographic databases in literary studies (second-order distant reading, in contrast to Moretti ’s and Jockers’s first-order distant reading), as 2) a complement of Moretti ’s quantitative data analysis, within 3) Kaplan ’s first circle. For this we propose to empirically analyze the relations between the evolution of


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the minor-literature constellation 16 using the MLAIB to review the assets of minor literatures in Europe and to approach their effects by means of their growth and decline over time, their distribution and diffusion according to languages, their sour so urce cess an and d su subj bjec ects, ts, an and d th thee di dime mens nsio ion n of th thei eirr au auth thor orss (i (in n te term rmss of pa part rtici icipa pati tion on and co-authorship).

Minor-Literature re 3 A Bi Bibl blio iome metr tric ic An Anal alys ysis is of th the e Minor-Literatu the e MLA MLAIB IB Constellation in th The introduction of new assets linked to DH, such as digitalization, online diffusion, proper classification of literature by (meta)data, etc., has allowed for better dissemination and a more insightful view of different kinds of texts. Many works and an d ac activ tiviti ities es of tr trad adit itio iona nall lit liter erar ary y cu cult ltur uree no now w co conc ncer ern n di digi gita tall me medi dia a (P (Pau aulso lson n 8) 8).. Among many changes that digitalization has brought, the threshold of attention to hu huma mani niti ties es,, pr prio iorr to th thee ph phen enom omen enon on th that at wo woul uld d as asse sert rt it itse self lf sp spec ecif ifica icall lly y as DH DH,, has allowed for the achievement of an enrichment of texts ’ details and attributes. The digi digital tal asse assets ts fos foster ter an inc increa reasing singly ly wid widesp esprea read d dim dimens ension ion,, sust sustain aining ing mod models els of research, discovery, discovery, and knowledge of litera literary ry products, opening up to niche nichess and to resources often confined to languages of belonging and creation. In this direction, a further step is then to reconsider DH, and moreover DH-CL, focusing on the possibilities that are offered to minority languages by the technological improvement not only as far as content and distribution are concerned, but especially in the light of the new shape of classifications, which now allow for a grea gr eate terr ca capi pilla llariz rizat atio ion n of da data ta re repr pres esen entin ting g th thee de deta tail ilss of th thes esee re reso sour urce ces. s. Minor literatures have increasingly been catalogued and there has been a furth fu rther er ca capi pill llar ariza izatio tion n of le less ss wi wide desp spre read ad la lang ngua uage ges, s, wh which ich ca can n be pe perce rceiv ived ed as an advantage in terms of visibility and availability for minority languages, since certain profiles traditionally did not consider minority languages at all. Socio-

16 One

of the anonymous reviewers claims that “being [minor literature in the Deleuzean sense] an epitome of deterritorialisation, it [...] can hardly constitute one and the same ‘minor-literature constellation’ with the ‘small literature’ and ‘minority literature’.” We disagree insofar as, on the one hand, the political dimension of minor literature – in the Deleuzean sense – is often most evident in kleine Literature Literaturen n and, on the other hand, Deleuze and Guattari ’s “artificial language ” ( Kafka 16) 16),, inc includ luding ing lin lingui guisti sticc def deform ormati ation, on, is oft often en str striki iking ng in min minori ority ty lit litera eratur ture. e. Par Parado adoxi xical cally, ly, Dele De leuz uzee an and d Gu Guat atta tari ri do no nott pr prov ovid idee a si sing ngle le ex exam ampl plee of Ka Kafk fka a ’s mi mino norr us usee of “Pragu Praguee German” in Kafka, but they cite examples from Antonin Artaud and Louis-Ferdinand Céline (cf. Bogue, Deleuze 101).


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cultural disrup cultural disruption, tion, and in this case, aspec aspects ts of literary sociology also reeva reevaluate luate the contribution of the dataset in terms of how information can circulate not only from a profil profiling ing top-down vertical vertical (academic) action, but also through a series of proced pro cedure uress tha thatt can cre create ate gras grassroo sroots ts dat data, a, eva evalua luated ted and carr carried ied out by ind indivi ividua duall actors, often researchers and/or experienced users, which increase the amount of inform inf ormati ation on rel relate ated d to eve every ry sin single gle lite literat rature ure by mea means ns of the their ir ove overal ralll res resour ources ces.. This phenomenon can be seen as a model of cultural analytics (Manovich). It allows us to bring together emerging aspects of digital culture, or a form of DH designated not for the metrics of classification but for the creation and consumption of resources, in order to define a quantitative measure of cultural innovation and visually represent how cultural assets gradually change over time. minor-litera literature ture conste constellation llation, In or orde derr to ap appr proa oach ch a bi bibl blio iome metr tric ic an anal alys ysis is of a minorspecifically from the MLAIB database, it is important to setup a first screening on what we can consider minority literature according to what is officially listed as minority languages. 17 Moving from the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages we already have a first overview of the European situation to define the scenario. In Figure 1 (February 2018) it is possible to see the relation and the presence of minority languages across Europe. The infographic represents the diffusion of 79 languages used by 203 language minorities across European states where regional or minority languages are used as well. The ideal approaches to carry out a careful bibliometric analysis of minorliterature litera ture conste constellation llationss startin starting g fro from m a pre predef define ined d dat databa abase se (in this cas casee the MLAIB via ProQuest) should therefore consider two possible and complementary analyses: 1) the analysis of the minor languages as defined in Figure 1, which expresses a possible and clear match between the minor linguistic resources and the corresponding forms of minority literatures; 2) the analysis of all the topics strictly related to minority literatures in order to trace the concept ’s evolution and growth in relation to the proliferation of the topic itself over the years and in different linguistic dimensions. Both these dimensions imply the definition of small datasets, analyzing the resources in the MLAIB database: on the one hand, we are facing the exploration of the entire collection of data in order to retrieve possible information concerning (minor) languages, and on the other hand, we are limiting the dataset to a filter related to a specific topic. Other possible instances of analysis can be conducted, but they must be considered the correspondence between the defined research fields (for example, where the resources

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is the European convention for the protection and promotion of languages used by traditional minorities. Together with the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities it constitutes the Council of Europe ’s commit com mitmen mentt to the pro protec tectio tion n of nat nation ional al min minori oritie ties. s. 17


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come from, i.e., i. e., their original location) and the limits of available data. In the MLAIB database, for instance, it is not possible to define an accurate locationbased match due to the lack of attributes and filters in the classification offered via ProQuest research. For example, the total results filtered by location offers a shift from 2,853,663 references to 220,773, including all the locations available. available.

The e di diff ffus usion ion of 79 la lang ngua uage gess use used d by 20 203 3 la lang ngua uage ge mi mino nori ritie tiess ac acro ross ss Eu Euro rope pean an Sta State tess Figure 1: Th where whe re reg region ional al or min minorit orityy lan langua guages ges are use used d (up (updat dated ed Feb Februa ruary ry 201 2018). 8).



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If we consider what appears from the visual patterns of Figure 1, we can approach the MLAIB database according to the overall growth of the available resources by deca de cade de (1 (184 840 0 to 20 2018 18)) an and d by la lang ngua uage ge (F (Fig igur uree 2) 2).. Wh What at em emer erge gess is th thee do domi mina nanc ncee of specific literatures, such as English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russ Ru ssia ian, n, ov over er th thee ot othe hers rs.. If we de dele lete te th thes esee si six x la lang ngua uage gess fr from om th thee in info fogr grap aphi hic, c, th thee result (Figure 3) is an interesting interesting persp perspective ective of the overa overall ll resources through the different differe nt decad decades. es.

The e gr grow owth th of re reso sour urces ces in ML MLAI AIB B con consi side deri ring ng de deca cade dess an and d la lang ngua uage gess (1 (184 840 0–2018). Figure 2: Th


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César Cés ar Dom Domíng ínguez uez,, Giov Giovann anna a Di Rosa Rosario, rio, and Mat Matteo teo Cia Ciaste stella llardi rdi

The e gr growt owth h of re reso sour urce cess pe perr de deca cade dess an and d la lang ngua uage gess in ML MLAI AIB B ex exclu cludi ding ng th the e si sixx Figure 3: Th langua lan guages ges with mor more e res resour ources ces (En (Engli glish, sh, Fre French, nch, Ger German man,, Spa Spanis nish, h, Ita Italia lian, n, Russ Russian ian). ).

Cutting those six languages, the result is a change of perspective in terms of decades. The most fertile decade is 1970 –1979, followed by 1980–1989 and 2000 – 2009, so apparently there is no chronological growth of resources excluding the main languages and considering the overall contribution of the remaining ones. If the analysis by decade defines a scheme that is unusual, contrasting the idea of



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a diachronic growth, a focus on the overall resources in the MLAIB database related to the different languages offers the perspective of a ‘short tail’ for those resources that do not belong to main literatures (Figure 4).

shortt tai taill’ of mi minor nor la lang ngua uage ge re resou sourc rces es in ML MLAI AIB. B. Figure 4: The ‘shor

Recognizing the idea of the “long tail” by Chris Anderson, according to which low demand resources can collectively build a better market share than the relatively few fe w be bests stsel elle lers, rs, we ca can n on only ly ob obse serv rvee a cle clear ar di diff ffer eren ence ce be betwe tween en th thee re reso sour urce cess of th thee main ma in la lang ngua uage gess an and d lit liter erat atur ures es an and d th thee se sett of mi mino norr lit liter erat atur ures es.. If we gro group up th thee fir first st six results of the graph in Figure 4 together, we obtain two sets of languages. The first set (including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian) consists of 2,554,499 resources. The second set, including all the remaining resources in all the languages, offers 250,631 resources, around 9.8 % of the first set. In this sense, the “long tail” of all the remaining minor literatures cannot sustain the quanti qua ntitat tative ive com compar parison isonwit with h the top six lite literat rature ure reso resource urcess def define ined d by lan langua guages. ges. Moving toward a more refined dataset, in order to match the European minor languages langua ges previ previously ously recognized (cf. Figure 1) with the topic inherent to the minority literatures themselves, a first advance to face the definition of minority literatures in the MLAIB database is to define a key filter for all the possible declinations around “minor* literature*.” The results move back to the beginning of the prese present nt article, detailing some information resumed resumed in Figure 5, where we can observe the growth of the resources from 1940 to 2017 in terms of different types of products products and languages languages mapped mapped out in the MLAIB database database.. The dataset, updated on February 2018, offers 369 results filtered from 1940 (the first year with one result in the MLAIB database of the book by John Bale A Stud St udyy in th thee Mi Mino norr Li Lite tera ratu ture re of th thee Re Refo forma rmatio tion n ) to 20 2018 18,, ar artic ticul ulat ated ed in 18 186 6 sch schol olar arly ly jour jo urna nals, ls, 14 144 4 bo book oks, s, an and d 39 di disse ssert rtat atio ions ns an and d th thes eses es.. Wh What at em emer erge gess is th thee pr pred edom omiinanc na ncee of En Engl glis ish h re reso sour urce cess (2 (279 79), ), fo foll llow owed ed by Fr Fren ench ch (4 (40) 0),, Sp Span anis ish h (2 (20) 0),,


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Figure 5: Years, languages and types of documents in the MLAIB database on the topic of literature* ture*” (1940–2017). “minor* litera

German (10), Portuguese (4), Polish (2), Turkish (2), and 1 resource only for Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Galician, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Slovenian, nia n, and Swe Swedis dish h (no (nott con conside sidering ring Afr Afrikaa ikaans, ns, Chi Chines nese, e, Jap Japane anese, se, and oth other er resources not related to the minority languages in Europe). It is important to underline that this kind of research cannot exactly focus on books and cultural products that properly express a minor literature resource if the definition of the metadata (in the case of the MLAIB the field ‘subject’ of the research form) explicitly avoids classifying the resource in a meticulous way. In this sense, the constellation of the resources considered is strictly related to the MLAIB classification. Another key issue is the attribution of minority literature in the MLAIB to resources related to minor authors of ‘traditional’ literature and, for our purposes,


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the focus on the European minority literatures, not directly recognizable from the features featur es of the database database (there is a lack of classification classification concerning concerning the ‘location’ attribute in MLAIB). Finally, if we consider a more extensive analysis, including in the research some related keywords such as “small” literature and “kleine Literatur,” the final dataset increases from 369 to 376 resources: an irrelevant threshold of variation (1.9 %). These aspects must be considered in order to properly redefine every dataset obtained obtained from the MLAIB database. If we refine the dataset, excluding the resources not related to the dimension of minority literatures in Europe, we have to remove 31.4 % of the resources (American, Oriental, and other resources not directly linked to minority literatures); however, the result is pretty similar (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Years, languages and types of documents in the MLAIB database on the topic of literature* ture*” (1940–2017). “minor* litera


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César Cés ar Dom Domíng ínguez uez,, Gio Giovan vanna na Di Ros Rosari ario, o, and Mat Matteo teo Cia Ciaste stella llardi rdi

Looking at the dimension of the authors in terms of participation and co-authorship (Figure 7), it is evident that as far as minority literature is concerned, the tendency is still to have a sole author.

Figure 7: Years, languages, and number of authors per resource in the MLAIB database related to Europe Eur opean an min minori ority ty lan langua guages ges (19 (1940 40–2017).

From th From thee pe persp rspec ectiv tivee of co comp mpar arat ativ ivee li lite tera ratu ture re,, mo movi ving ng fro from m th thee id idea ea of de defin finin ing g if in the MLAIB database database there are comparative comparative studies between, on the one hand hand,, minor literatures within themselves and, on the other, minor literatures compared with ‘traditional’ literatures, we need to make an introductory statement. In order to obtain a grounded analysis, the perspective is to consider every single minor literature resource according to its own language of pertinence and to verify if, in thee sa th same me re reso sour urce ce,, it is po poss ssib ible le to fi find nd a co comp mpar aris ison on wi with th on onee or mo more re ot othe herr mi mino norr literature(s) or with a ‘traditional’ literature. In order to track back this kind of results, it is necessary to analyze every single classified subject and the title of the resour res ources ces.. The Thedef defini initio tion n of spe specifi cificc ter terms ms to cla classif ssify y the sub subjec ject(s) t(s) of eve every ry res resour ource ce in th thee ML MLAI AIB B ca can n of offe ferr a br broa oade derr pe pers rspe pect ctiv ivee of th thee to topi pics cs;; so in th thes esee ca case sess th thee be best st solu so luti tion on is to re revi vise se th thee ob obta tain ined ed da data tase sett to do doub uble le ch chec eck k th thee re resu sult ltss fr from om a cr crit itic ical al (human) (huma n) perspe perspective. ctive. The research thus has to consider 1) the presence of all possible minor literatures (defined by their specific languages), AND (written in capitals as a Boolean logical operator for the search) 2) at least another literature. The first obtained dataset, not reviewed from a critical human perspective, is represented in Fi Figu gure re 8, offe offerin ring g a sh shift ift fro from m th thee 36 369 9 re resou source rcess de defin fined ed fo forr “minor minor** litera literature* ture*” to 8,264 resources in terms of comparative studies between minor literatures or minor literatures compared with ‘traditional’ literatures.


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The e re resou sourc rces es an and d the their ir la lang ngua uage gess fo forr co comp mpar arat ative ive st studi udies es wi withi thin n mi mino norr li lite tera ratur tures es or Figure 8: Th minor min or lit litera eratur tures es comp compare ared d wit with h tra tradit ditiona ionall lite literat rature uress (19 (1940 40–2017).

Finally, if we consider the themes of the resources mapped out, we can approach the MLA MLAIB IB dat databa abase se acco accordi rding ng to the spe specifi cificc att attrib ribute utess def define ined d in ter terms ms of ‘subject’ and ‘title.’ In order to have a visual overview of the most important terms adop ad opte ted d to cl clas assi sify fy al alll th thee re reso sour urce cess on th thee mi mino nori rity ty li lite tera ratu ture re to topi pic, c, we ca can n ob obta tain in a balanced visual cloud, represented in Figure 9.


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Bala lance nced d ta tag g cl cloud oud of re recur curri ring ng te term rmss in th the e ML MLAI AIB B da data taba base se re rela late ted d to mi mino nori rity ty Figure 9: Ba literature litera ture (1917–2017).

4 Concl Concluding uding Rema Remarks rks This is a triply introductory essay. First, we have conducted research on the conceptual problems that surround the concept of minor literature, which shows the overwhelming influence of Deleuze and Guattari ’s 1975 foundational book in international academia. In contrast to Deleuze and Guattari ’s definition, we have traced alternative formulations, as well as alternative concepts, as mainly singularized larize d in the works of Kafka, Kundera, Kundera, and Ugre šić. Second, we have provided a so far nonexistent panorama on the relationships between the digital humanities and comparative literature – and, more specifically, comparative literary history. Such a panorama proves that, on the one hand, the digital humanities need to overcome pervading Anglo-monolingualism and, on the other hand, comparative literature needs to open to digitalization – both as an object of study and an analytical tool – in our digital age. In the more specific case of comparative literary history, we have adhered to a Braudelian definition; its focus on the production and reception of literatures in specific social and cultural contexts could considerably profit from the amount of data processed by digital tools. Third,, we Third we have condu conducted cted introd introductory uctory resear research ch on on the MLAIB datab database ase which, as such, takes into account only a simplified approach to the analysis of the content related to minor literatures and minor languages. 18 In order to develop a more

18 One

of the anonymous reviewers claims that there is a conspicuous contradiction between minor literature (in the Deleuzean sense), DH, and “the associated methodologies (close and



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extensive study, it is advisable to go beyond the purely bibliometric sphere and approach the resources offered in the MLAIB database with more analytical and critical study. Thee da Th data taba base se of offe fers rs a se serie riess of fi fiel elds ds th that at ca can n pr prov ovid idee di diff ffer eren entt ty typo polo logi gies es of th thee dataset. datase t. Never Neverthele theless, ss, in order to return a pertin pertinent ent result related to the different possibilities possib ilities crossing and analyzing minority literatures, literatures, the classification classification of the resources in the MLAIB database has to be revised by means of human screening. The results must be analyzed in order to understand exactly how some attributes associated with specific subjects can be declined to deepen the analysis and to clarify a frame framework work of compre comprehensi hension on to study minor literature over the decad decades es and the topics offered. This approach is important to understand that any dataset emerging from MLAIB to investigate minority literature topics has to benefit from an in-depth human parsing and analysis. In this first introductory phase, we neither conducted a very specific database analysis – which would include crossing datasets that can group single literatures and minor minor literatures, compare them accordin acco rding g to dec decade adess of dev develo elopme pment, nt, ass assign ign sub subjec jects ts and andexa exact ct titl titles es and andsub subtitl titles, es, and co-authoring dimensions – nor did we pursue comparative studies between minor min or lite literatu ratures res or min minor or lite literatu ratures res and ‘traditional’ literatures. With all this considered, a logical conclusion emerges. Applying visual reading and infographics can be of great support to an immediate understanding of how ho w re reso sour urce cess ar artic ticul ulat atee spe specif cific ic th them emes es an and, d, in th this is ca case se,, ex expl plai ain n wh what at th thee mo mode dell of minor literatures is; however, it is also important to reflect on a deepening of the bibliometric analysis to be carried out not only with the establishment of the datasets and with their strictly numerical alignments, but also with the sociocultural reading, the cultural analysis of the subjects, titles, and works in relation to how they were classified within the MLAIB database. These three introductory stages may provide firmer ground for future attempts of a comparative history of minor literatures in European languages. In this regard, one of the main concerns of such a history should be challenging the pervading image of minor literatures as hyper hyper-locali -localized. zed.

distant reading).” We disagree with both ideas. First, we are investigating minor literatures not only onl y in Del Deleuz euzean ean ter terms. ms. Sec Second ond,, the associ associati ations ons bet betwee ween n min minor or lit litera eratur turee and clo close se reading, reading, on the one hand, and DH and distant reading, on the other, are highly problematic, so much so that close reading and distant reading are not opposites (cf. Bode). But even within the restricted field of minor literature in the Deleuzean sense, there are interesting connections with DH, which we cannot examine here. Cf., for example, Soulier concerning DH as agencements, whose first concept con ceptual ualiza izatio tion n is pre precise cisely ly loc locate ated d in Del Deleuz euzee and Gua Guatta ttari ri ’s Kafka.


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On Writing a Comparative Literary History: Delocalizing Minor Literatures in European Languages in the Age of ‘Big Data’

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