Toward aMinorMichelstaedter

Abstract

Carlo Michelstaedter (1987–1910) is mostly known for his tragic suicide and for his undefended tesi di laurea, titled La persuasione e la rettorica. He has thus been commonly regarded as a marginal, peripheral thinker, and his work has been often placed on the outskirts of the Italian philosophical and literary canon. In this article I focus precisely on Michelstaedter as a minor author, and on his work as an example of minor writing, but in light of what Deleuze and Guattari have called “minor literature,” a concept they first enunciate in their work on Kafka. A comparison between Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theories and Michelstaedter’s oeuvre does not in fact confirm Michelstaedter’s purportedly marginal position vis à vis canonical Italian culture. Rather, it allows, first, a reassessment of the potential of the attribute minor that overturns the negative connotations attached to Michelstaedter’s peripherality, and, second, a literary and pragmatic interpretation of his work capable of both preserving its uncanny intensity and underlining its socio-political implications.

Cite this

Damiano Benvegnù (2016). Toward aMinorMichelstaedter. Italian Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/01614622.2016.1158581

@article{damiano2016toward,
  title  = {Toward aMinorMichelstaedter},
  author = {Benvegnù, Damiano},
  year   = {2016},
  journal = {Italian Culture},
  doi    = {10.1080/01614622.2016.1158581}
}

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