If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English as a variation of minor literature

This article argues that Noor Naga’s (2022) If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English adapts Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of minor literature to her culturally specific post-Arab Spring minor experience of Egypt. Following the Deleuze-Guattarian model, Naga’s narrative is political in nature, collective in spirit, and deterritorializes the English language for minor ends, employing metamorphosis in a personal, experimental, and non-literal manner. However, Naga also uses tools untheorized in their model, including symbols, non-linearity, and auto-metafiction, to reflect her own minor experience. In light of this variation from the Deleuze-Guattarian model, the article builds upon Abida Younas’s understanding of the specific nature of post-Arab Spring minor literature which she argues excludes metamorphosis in favour of metaphor. It argues that Naga’s text produces a distinctive and culturally specific minor narrative that combines the Deleuze-Guattarian minor model of writing and Younas’s post-Arab Spring adaptation, reshaping both frameworks in light of contemporary Egyptian realities.