Gregor Samsa’s Pagkagimata (Awakening) in Bikol: A Becoming-Minor in Translation

Kristian Cordero’s translation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis instantiates what the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call minor literature. Preferring the Bikol term Pagkagimata—the literal event of Gregor Sama’s becoming-animal in the novel as title of the translation and the utilization of the Rinconada Bikol language for the transformed Samsa—Cordero has typified a perspective of translation that challenges the popular view of fluent translation from the source text to the target language. Exemplifying the concept of becoming-minor of Deleuze and Guattari and deploying Lawrence Venuti’s notion of the “remainder,” An Pagkagimata ni Gregor Samsa exhibits a deterritorialization of Bikol language and reveals what translation is in practice—an ideology and utopia. With this Deluezio-Guattarian perspective of Cordero’s translation an alternative way of framing questions surrounding identity, particularly of Bikolness, is proffered that is, as an invention for a people-to-come.