On Literary Sensation:

Deleuze, Language, and Vernacular Writing

Udaya Kumar
University 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.