Drawing on field theory, this paper aims to shed light on the development and functioning of the Kurdish literary world in Turkey, characterized, in particular, by the use of a non-official language. It argues that this "small literary world" is to be understood in relation to a "double macrocosm": the sphere of Kurdish politics and the national Turkish sphere, which provide specific constraints and resources. The paper argues that in such a context the emergence of a literary field, autonomous from other social fields and independent from political stakes, follows an unpredictable path, and will not always be achieved political dimension of the literary act stresses its dependency on political stakes and the field of politics. This however does not impede the emergence of autonomous literary institutions. The multilingualism of the actors involved drives also toward another heteronomy: this small literary world is also to be understood in relation to the Turkish literary field. The paper first presents the macrocosms in which Kurdish literary activities developed. It then examines the progressive integration of a field freeing itself from political constraints. Lastly, it focuses on the trajectories of a few writers, the analyses of which show the intertwining of the different worlds.Using the case of Kurdish literature, this paper aims to sketch some of the patterns of the development and functioning of what can be defined, following Casanova, as "small literary worlds". 1 It draws on the field theory elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu and on some critiques by Michel Werner, Denis Saint-Jacques, and Alain Viala, among others. These authors have underlined that Bourdieu's theory (as exposed, for example. in The Rules of Art) does not deal with the question of infra-, inter-, or transnational literatures (and literary fields), seeming to accept the given of literary comparatism and the existence of distinct national literatures and institutions. 2 Works -with different disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical tools -have been produced, however, studying these worlds. (Literature and post-colonial scholars in Anglo-Saxon contexts have widely dealt with the issues of literature, language, and domination; while the sociology of literature, mainly in French contexts, has dealt with particularistic literatures and/or literary worlds or transnational literatures.) Pascale Casanova's work examines a global literary world (monde littéraire) by considering "literary works on an international scale." This "leads to the discovery of further principles of contiguity or differentiation that make it possible to associate works that are not usually thought of as being related and sometimes to separate ones that are customarily grouped together, thus bringing out neglected properties" (178). Doing so especially enhances the question of domination throughout the "world republic of
