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Kafka: a Blueprint of Desire

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Kafka: a Blueprint of Desire Kafka: A Blueprint of Desire by Lara Pehar A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto © Copyright by Lara Pehar 2017 Kafka: A Blueprint of Desire Lara Pehar Doctor of Philosophy Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto 2017 Abstract Desire in Kafka has been variously theorized, through the works of Freud, Lacan, Girard, Deleuze, and others. Yet there appears to have been, up to now, no inverse attempt: to extract from within his literature a theoretical model of desire. This dissertation fills this gap in scholarship and reveals Kafka as a great theoretician of desire. Since Kafka never wrote such a theory, my objective becomes to lift its blueprint from within his texts and to formulate an account of desire these works generate. I do so by tracing the author’s incessant experimentation with desire on a handful of key texts between 1912 and 1922. Within these works, desire appears as pure Verkehr, a force that tends towards the subject’s self- realization. His letters, novels and stories, as I demonstrate, entail a series of literary experiments that test the potency of written texts on the one hand and human bodies on the other to be employed as vehicles for desire—as means for this Verkehr towards becoming. ii In Briefe an Felice and Der Prozess Kafka takes up the former, exploring the possibility of liberating the symbolic self from the body through writing, by passing off written documents as a legitimate proxy of one’s identity. Unconvinced by the results, Kafka reverses the hierarchy of writing over corporeality as a mode of self-realization, shifting the site of desire from text to body in attempts to write (In der Strafkolonie), read (Ein Landarzt), and stage (Ein Hungerküstler) bodies as narrative texts. But this counter experiment reaffirms the supposition of duality between the corporeal and the symbolic selves as alternative modes of self-realization, so that desire remains thwarted by the limitations of the chosen medium. It is in his late novel-project, Das Schloß, that Kafka successfully dismantles this opposition and arrives at a more nuanced understanding of desire as a free multi-directional force of self-becoming. Kafka’s evolving conceptualization of desire has direct implications for the increasingly open narrative structure of his late writings: As the flow of desire ceases to be determined by the choice of a single vehicle (written texts or human bodies) and by its limitations, so too the Schloß-novel escapes the narrow parameters of a linear text and itself becomes multi-directional, culminating in a new literary form: a hypertext. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe my gratitude to several institutions and individuals who have nourished my intellectual work, and whom I would like to formally acknowledge. For their generous financial support, I thank: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Joint Initiative for German and European Studies; the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); the University of Toronto’s School of Graduate Studies; the University of Heidelberg; the University of Trier and the Volkswagen Foundation. The years I have spent completing this project have been memorable and rewarding in large part because of the people who have guided me as a scholar and as a person. First and foremost, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my Doktorvater, Professor John Zilcosky, whose intellectual insight and tireless guidance have so greatly contributed to the formation of my ideas and the writing of this dissertation. I will always value your praise and encouragement, and above all, your genuine interest in my work. I have benefited from the wisdom and calm demeanor of Professor John Noyes, who has been a mentor of mine, in some capacity or other, for over fifteen years. And it has been my honour to have Professor Rebecca Comay serve on my committee. Both provided helpful suggestions and challenged my arguments, and in doing so enriched my ideas beyond what this dissertation reflects. For this I thank you. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Professor Dr. Roland Reuß, who has provided valuable guidance during my research years at the University of Heidelberg, and whose own research on Kafka has been instrumental to mine. I am indebted to my parents, Nina and Bruno, for their unconditional love and generosity. I thank my mother for instilling in me the love for literature. She read to me from the day I was born and taught me to read by the time I was four. When the war broke out in my iv native Yugoslavia, and we lost our home and nearly all our belongings, she managed to safekeep a twenty-volume book collection which she had gifted me when I was seven. It remains one of the only surviving possessions from my childhood and among the most cherished items in my library. I thank my father, who took me to English lessons even while Sarajevo was under siege and misdirected bombs exploded in our neighbouring town on a daily basis. He had the wisdom to recognize the impending war, and the resourcefulness to get us out before it was too late—first to Croatia, then to Germany and eventually to Canada, where he would once again take me to language classes (this time German, at a Saturday school where I also read Kafka for the first time). My younger sister Lea was born months after the Berlin wall fell and the dissolution of Yugoslavia began, and so grew up in a completely different world than the one into which I was born. In the diaspora that has shaped who we have become, she remains my strongest connection to the many places we once called home. She has been my greatest role model, and I hope that at least at times, I have been hers. Finally, I thank my long-time life-partner and soon-to-be husband, Dr. Mohammad Golriz, who, for nearly seven years planned his life around my arrivals and departures, supported my every decision, patiently waited for this moment, and joyously awaited my return to Heidelberg—a place that is neither his nor my hometown but one we call our home. With deep gratitude and love, I dedicate this work to you. v ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations of Works by Kafka BF Briefe an Felice. Ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1998. E Die Erzählungen und andere ausgewählte Prosa. Ed. Roger Hermes. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2006. NS 1 Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente I. Ed. Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1993. P Der Proceß. Ed. Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1990. T1 Tagebücher Band 1: 1909-1912. Ed. Hans-Gerd Koch. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2006. T2 Tagebücher Band 2: 1912-1914. Ed. Hans-Gerd Koch. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2005. T3 Tagebücher Band 3: 1914-1923. Ed. Hans-Gerd Koch. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2001. Sch Das Schloß. Ed. Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1981. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Lifting the Blueprint: Kafka’s Investigations into Desire ..................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 From the Letter to the Law: Narrative as the Site of Desire in Der Prozess ....................... 1 CHAPTER 2 Corporal Desire: Writing, Reading, and Staging Bodies as Narrative Texts in In der Strafkolonie, Ein Landarzt and Ein Hungerkünstler ................................................... 32 CHAPTER 3 K.’s Schloß-Geschichten and the Making of a Hypertext ................................................... 66 CONCLUSION Towards a New Literacy: Doing Kafka in the Digital Age ................................................. 101 Notes .................................................................................................................................... 113 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 128 vii INTRODUCTION Lifting the Blueprint: Kafka’s Investigations into Desire Much has been theorized about desire in Kafka’s works: from a transcendental to an immanent desire, and the paradoxical appearance of transcendence within that immanence.1 Yet in this vast secondary literature, Kafka’s own philosophical investigations into desire remain largely unexplored. This dissertation interjects here and aims to reveal Kafka as a great theoretician of desire. As readers of Kafka’s stories, novel-projects and letters, we are faced with scenes of desire at nearly every turn of the page; his characters encounter it at each new door. Recall the parable Vor dem Gesetz. It tells of a man from the country who seeks admittance to the law and a doorkeeper who prohibits him entry. The man from the country spends his life waiting for the moment when he might be permitted to enter and dies before the law’s illuminated opening—a door that, as he learns in his final moments, existed for him alone and which the doorkeeper then closes. The man’s dissatisfaction with his position before the law, in which the parable places him and the same idiomatic expression places every one of us, is puzzling. But even more curious is why he obeys a law that keeps him from the law—why he accepts the doorkeeper’s prohibition and resists his own never-ending desire. It is evident that the authority of the law and the man’s desire operate in a mutual interplay, each with the power to overthrow the other, so that in the end the reader is left wondering who outfoxed whom: Did the doorkeeper trick the man viii from the country into submitting to a law that thwarted his desire and led to his exhaustion and death? Or did the latter’s death and the passing of his desire extinguish the need for the law’s radiantly seductive and yet forbidden entrance? Was it perhaps after all the man from the country who outwitted the doorkeeper and exhausted the law, proving, even if only at the expense of his own life, the possibility of bringing the deferral to an end? The protagonist of Der Prozess, Josef K., who shares the countryman’s intense desire for contact with the law, recognizes his own power to single-handedly put the entire justice system out of operation simply by disengaging.
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