7.30.2005
kafka-like
i've spent the past month or so dealing with kafka-- i finally read the castle from cover to cover, followed by walter benjamin's famous essay on him, and ending with deleuze and guattari's toward a minor literature. during that time, i've been trying to formulate my own investment in his work.
as far as my personal inclinations go, like deleuze and guattari, i'm not terribly drawn to either of the two dominant approaches to him-- namely the spiritual and psychoanalytic routes. both have their merits as systems of interpretation, but i don't respond to them personally. the thought of a godless world excites me more than it startles me, and, uh, i guess i get along with my dad pretty well too. while the notion of a "minor" literature-- "to be a sort of stranger within (one's) own language"-- is a fascinating one, i find it less applicable to kafka than d & g might have one believe. "deleuzian" kafka is too covered in "deleuzian" fingerprints to amount to a convincing argument. at times, d & g seem more interested in themselves.
for me, it is through relationships, rather than bureaucracies, that kafka's k. begins to make sense. an example: a few years ago, me and a good friend were both emerging from troubled romantic relationships. sharing a sense of abandonment (or whatever) we began discussing one of the more abject moments of any break-up-- a demand, more or less, to be put on trial. you know the drill... a sense of rejection sets in, and one is filled with an otherworldly desire to know what is wrong with one's self. an embarrassing plea to be told inevitably follows-- as if every nuance of an inter-personal dynamic could suddenly emerge as one grand symptom laying dormant behind a volatile veneer of sympathy. "tell me what's wrong with me." "just tell me what went wrong." and so on.
it is in moments like this that romance is at its absolute worst. desire becomes binary-- tied to a sickly logic that sharpens its fangs on the notion of logic itself. sexless logic. a detective story replaces a romance, only the sleuth is wounded and desperate. during the conversation, we discussed the absurdity of such demands. what if someone were to do it? what if you were literally told what went wrong? can a dynamic between two people (or more) run its course so thoroughly that its end becomes a verbalized utterance? and if so, who in the hell would have the guts to hear it? wishy-washy rejection is bad enough, and yet one feels the masochistic urge to demand of it a slogan.
now, kafka is no romantic, but the structure of this pathological momentum becomes the very climate of his work. it sets his thoughts on "a line of escape" as deleuze and guattari might say, but it's a seasick ride along the way. k. asks this very sort of "wrong" question; he builds his universe upon it. those who must enter this world-- meaning those who are uninitiated to it-- have a comic effect, but one that refers back to k. himself. he aspires to greater and greater heights of sublime rejection; to the image of klamm with his head down through a forbidden window.
reading kafka without any over-arching sense of recent rejection (i've been remarkably happy for the past few months), i'm reminded of the absurdity of grand revelations. i find that my world is most engaging when things are neither revealed nor concealed, but apprehended with an affection for the confusion that might oneday emerge. of late, a favorite song of mine is nico's "afraid." a moving, melancholic ballad building up to an effectively melodramatic phrase: you are beautiful and you are alone. when nico sings it, it's sad. but my investment goes beyond that. the sentence could also be a great compliment (to someone or something). it could signal that the obligatory quest for the heart of the matter has ended. it is time to turn your back to the castle, and substitute curiosity for alienation.
as far as my personal inclinations go, like deleuze and guattari, i'm not terribly drawn to either of the two dominant approaches to him-- namely the spiritual and psychoanalytic routes. both have their merits as systems of interpretation, but i don't respond to them personally. the thought of a godless world excites me more than it startles me, and, uh, i guess i get along with my dad pretty well too. while the notion of a "minor" literature-- "to be a sort of stranger within (one's) own language"-- is a fascinating one, i find it less applicable to kafka than d & g might have one believe. "deleuzian" kafka is too covered in "deleuzian" fingerprints to amount to a convincing argument. at times, d & g seem more interested in themselves.
for me, it is through relationships, rather than bureaucracies, that kafka's k. begins to make sense. an example: a few years ago, me and a good friend were both emerging from troubled romantic relationships. sharing a sense of abandonment (or whatever) we began discussing one of the more abject moments of any break-up-- a demand, more or less, to be put on trial. you know the drill... a sense of rejection sets in, and one is filled with an otherworldly desire to know what is wrong with one's self. an embarrassing plea to be told inevitably follows-- as if every nuance of an inter-personal dynamic could suddenly emerge as one grand symptom laying dormant behind a volatile veneer of sympathy. "tell me what's wrong with me." "just tell me what went wrong." and so on.
it is in moments like this that romance is at its absolute worst. desire becomes binary-- tied to a sickly logic that sharpens its fangs on the notion of logic itself. sexless logic. a detective story replaces a romance, only the sleuth is wounded and desperate. during the conversation, we discussed the absurdity of such demands. what if someone were to do it? what if you were literally told what went wrong? can a dynamic between two people (or more) run its course so thoroughly that its end becomes a verbalized utterance? and if so, who in the hell would have the guts to hear it? wishy-washy rejection is bad enough, and yet one feels the masochistic urge to demand of it a slogan.
now, kafka is no romantic, but the structure of this pathological momentum becomes the very climate of his work. it sets his thoughts on "a line of escape" as deleuze and guattari might say, but it's a seasick ride along the way. k. asks this very sort of "wrong" question; he builds his universe upon it. those who must enter this world-- meaning those who are uninitiated to it-- have a comic effect, but one that refers back to k. himself. he aspires to greater and greater heights of sublime rejection; to the image of klamm with his head down through a forbidden window.
reading kafka without any over-arching sense of recent rejection (i've been remarkably happy for the past few months), i'm reminded of the absurdity of grand revelations. i find that my world is most engaging when things are neither revealed nor concealed, but apprehended with an affection for the confusion that might oneday emerge. of late, a favorite song of mine is nico's "afraid." a moving, melancholic ballad building up to an effectively melodramatic phrase: you are beautiful and you are alone. when nico sings it, it's sad. but my investment goes beyond that. the sentence could also be a great compliment (to someone or something). it could signal that the obligatory quest for the heart of the matter has ended. it is time to turn your back to the castle, and substitute curiosity for alienation.
