A Reply to Dix' «Kafka Imagining America»

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:53:39 +0000

by Justin N. Smolin

I must admit, I have neither the knowledge nor the expertise to write a proper response to such a brave and finely written essay; however, I do wish to set out a few objections which occur to me against Dr. Dix’ thesis.

The thing that most troubles me (and I am not ashamed of stating it out right, although to do so is to risk offence and misunderstanding) is the essay’s anti-Americanism, which (although it couches itself in Kafka’s language), seems to me to be at heart only a variant of the sort of vague, Europhile anti-Americanism so widely prevalent in the sort of academic circles Dr. Dix presumably frequents. I am not convinced that this sort of anti-Americanism is really wrong; it is a natural reaction against the arrogant, unilateralist behavior of the world’s only superpower, and, as such, it plays a positive role as a badly needed counterbalancing force. However, even in its role as a positive force, it is clearly a part of the system of social interactions Dr. Dix is urging us to withdraw from. That Amerika is a book intent on dissembling (and therefore in some way eliminating) social structure, I am inclined to agree with; that it is a book that, in some indirect manner, reflects a European criticism of the utopian America of Kafka’s time, I am also inclined to agree with. But to construct from this a definite anti-Americanism, and to attempt to identify this new anti-Americanism with Kafka, Dickinson, and even literature itself, seems to me to be dishonest, an underhanded capitulation to the sort of fashionable political attitudes Kafka would have turned up his nose at (or, at the very least, ignored).

The Man Who Disappeared: Kafka Imagining Amerika

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:44:08 +0000

by Douglas Shields Dix

(A reply to this article by Dr Smolin can be read here )

Introduction

“The problem is not that of being free but of finding a way out…”-Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mineure

Between 1911 and 1914, Franz Kafka wanted to disappear. More precisely, he desperately sought a way out of the existential predicament of his life as he had been living it then, and towards a life that would yield him the necessary conditions to allow him to follow his chosen path of writing. It was during this period that he came to realize that the only true way out was through writing itself. He imagined other ways out, and even experimented with several, but in the end he closed all the doors he had opened, forcing himself to cross the threshold of the only door he would or could ever open–that of literature. It was during this period that he most despaired of ever becoming a writer, and yet it was during this period that he finally succeeded in becoming one to his own satisfaction (and he was always his most demanding critic). This particular passage in his life is worth dwelling upon because it gives a key to his later work, even if the novel he intended to be his initiation into serious literature during this period was ultimately abandoned, and even held in low esteem by its creator, who referred to it later in his diary as the “lowlands of writing” (in comparison to his having finished, in one sitting, the first piece of writing he felt justified his calling himself a writer-the story Das Urteil/The Judgment).

Missing on The Kafka Project

A Reply to Dix' «Kafka Imagining America»

The Man Who Disappeared: Kafka Imagining Amerika