%0 Journal Article
%T Toward a minor Michelstaedter
%J Italian Culture
%D 2016
%A Benvegnu, D.
%V 34
%N 2
%P 81-97
%X 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. © 2016 American Association for Italian Studies.<p /><p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I 
%@ 0161-4622
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01614622.2016.1158581