ACADEMIA Letters RESPONSE to Naeem Nedaee on applying the theories of Delueze and Guatarri to Beloved Justine Tally Naeem Nedaee’s article from 2017 is erudite, provocative, and challenging to read and digest. As I previously only had a cursory understanding of Deleuze and Guartarri’s concepts, I have been obliged to delve into the pros and cons of such a theory in much more detail, which has been critically enriching. However, I confess to being a “resisting reader,” particularly because, as a scholar of the work of Toni Morrison, I am not convinced that the arguments and examples fulfl their stated intention. As I have always remarked to my students, the purpose of literary theory is to produce more meaning, but I have not been persuaded that with a Deleuze-Guatarri reading of Beloved this is actually the case. In the frst place, given the position of Beloved (1988) in American, indeed World liter- ature, I have trouble considering Toni Morrison’s work “minor literature.” This, of course leads us to a consideration of the defnition of “minor literature” (see particularly Yanli He’s “Rethinking Minor Literature…”) as used by the author as well as the examples from Beloved that supposedly substantiate that defnition. Secondly, if a minor language is the use of a major language from a “deterritorialized” position, a trait illustrated by Deleuze and Guatarri with respect to postcolonial writers, then one must consider the function of “Black English,” its attributes and its historical position within the English language. As argued in the 1960s and 70s by Geneva Smitherman, JL Dillard, and others, the historical development of idiom, grammar and syntax into a form of “English” was a response to conditions of slavery and the successful attempt to speak in front of the white masters without being understood. (Contrary to “postcolonial” writers who want to speak to and be understood by their former oppressors.) Obviously there are some who would refer to Black English as dialect, but that avoids the artistry involved in speaking or writing it. Fascinated by the nuances of the language, nineteenth century dialectologists Academia Letters, July 2021 Corresponding Author: Justine Tally, jtally@ull.es Citation: Tally, J. (2021). RESPONSE to Naeem Nedaee on applying the theories of Delueze and Guatarri to Beloved. Academia Letters, Article 2180. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2180. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0