Kafka’s Father
In the reception of Kafka’s work it is almost always mentioned that he had a very tough and strict father and that this can be seen in his works through the transcendence of the law. The law is so cruel in Kafka, basically because his father was so strict, or to speak more psychoanalytically, because of the Name-of-the-Father. But it might be relevant to contrast this predominant image with Kafka’s own words, as in this passage from his diaries from the turn of the year 1911–1912:
“It is unpleasant to listen when the father, with unceasing side jabs at the fortunate situation of his contemporaries and especially his children, speaks of the sufferings he had to endure in his youth. No one denies that for years he had open wounds on his legs due to insufficient winter clothing, that he often went hungry, that already at the age of 10 he had to push a small cart through the villages even in winter and very early in the morning — but what he refuses to understand is that these real facts, in comparison to the equally real fact that I did not suffer all this, allow not the slightest conclusion that I was happier than he, that he may elevate himself because of those wounds on his legs, that from the very beginning he assumes and insists that I cannot appreciate his past suffering, and that precisely because I did not have the same suffering, I must be endlessly grateful to him. How gladly I would listen if he continuously spoke about his youth and his parents, but to hear all this in a tone of boasting and quarreling is tormenting. Again and again, he claps his hands together: “Who knows that today! What do children know! No one has suffered that! Does any child understand that today!”
Is this a very strict Father? Is he authoritarian? In a way yes, but Kafka turns the most of the reception of his work on his head. Kafka’s father is not some paternal strong figure that is cruel in issuing orders left and right, and demanding the utmost from his son and thereby making him feel inferior. No, on the contrary, the father’s tactic is rather a constant production of guilt through telling stories of how bad he had it as a child and that today, children should be much happier. What we see in Kafka is not the Name-of-the-Father, but rather the superego.
What makes Kafka’s father unbearable is not excessive demand to obey the law, but on the contrary, the way he constantly shows weakness and tries to guilt-pressure his kids into feeling sorry for him. Through their more material well-being they should be happier and thankful. “I must be endlessly grateful to him”.
So, what we see in Kafka is not the common refrain of a “stern” father, but on the contrary the injunction to be happy: “you should be happy and thankful”, since you don’t have to at the age of 10 “to push a cart through the villages” without “winter clothing”, “open wounds on the legs” etc. The father rules not through the paternal function and prohibition, but through superego.
He does not rule through saying: “Do this, because I am your Father!”, he says, “look at these wounds I have on my feet, don’t you realize how much I have done for you??!!!”. This is what makes the father so cruel, as he himself says: “No one has suffered that, does any child understand that today?”
The Father is, therefore, not at all to be identified with the common image of a “Kafkaesque” Father, but on the contrary with the modern superego. It is not the father’s strictness, but his endless stories of his own suffering that makes him unbearable and much more suffocating as a law.
Kafka’s father is “strict” through his endless stories of suffering that works much more effectively than a direct order to his children. And it is much more this father that informs Kafka’s universe of super-egoic guilt. This father is precisely a father as a modern superego, not as the Kafka reception all too often believe simply an excessive harsh father.
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This should also tell us a lot not simply about Kafka’s universe, but about psychoanalysis’ discovery of the father. Freud noticed that people tend to get more neurotic with the absence of patriarchal authority, not as we would expect, less. This does not mean that Freud “defends” the father. On the contrary, he diagnoses why people get neurotic in his absence. There is also no way to rebel against this father directly: he does not issue orders, but tell about his own suffering (and hence there is no order to disobey). This is why the only refuge for Kafka is his diary, the radical internalisation of the rebellion. As Kafka himself writes: “No one denies that for years he had open wounds on his legs due to insufficient winter clothing…” — because how could you. The recount of suffering is a form of authority that cannot be questioned. Kafka says a little bit earlier that he could not survive without his diary: the diary becomes a kind of refuge, an escape from a conflict that cannot take place in reality, since there’s no authority to disobey. In this sense, the writing of the diary becomes a way of sustaining himself and his own desire, his own place in the world. Kafka has no “room of his own”, his own room is in the diary.
So, there is, as both Freud and Kafka remind us, not just one father there, but two. There is the father of the the Law, the oedipal Father of prohibition, and then the Superego father of enjoyment (the Father of Totem and Taboo). Kafka’s father is the latter, precisely through his endless stories of suffering, which is his way of enjoying. And to encounter a Father that enjoys, is much more unbearable and claustrophobic than the traditional “stern”, oedipal Father.
This is also what Deleuze and Guattari gets wrong in their study of Kafka and the “minor literature”. Here they oppose the oedipal father to the flow of becoming-animal. But they overlook that the oedipal father is not alone. Behind him is the superego father and this father is in fact much closer to their own deterritorialisation. Kafka’s father deterritorialise any sense of worth through demanding endless thankfulness, hence the deterritorialization is not emancipatory, as Deleuze and Guattari assumes, but much more claustrophobic. Their one-sided view of the Father (oedipal) prevents them from seeing this in Kafka.
What Kafka is trying to do is to bring in both fathers in perspective. It is about comparing “to understand is that these real facts, in comparison to the equally real fact that I did not suffer all this, allow not the slightest conclusion that I was happier than he”. What Kafka is trying to do, with his wonderful formula “these real facts” with “equally real fact”, is not simply to opt for one over the other. It is to bring both of these perspectives in tension with each other.
Kafka’s own perspective is in fact not at all rebellious. It is rather a corrective, but one that can only be voiced to the diary: please be a proper father! (“How gladly I would listen if he continuously spoke about his youth and his parents”). This perspective includes not simply the father but a father who himself would be a son (“spoke about his youth and his parents”). That is Kafka is asking for a kind of generational bond, where a father would know how to be a father, for a family to work. What Kafka’s passage shows is not a stern father, but a father who is not a father at all. This is what is not unique to Kafka. If the Father has become a superegoic figure this has to do with a historical transition, a transition that Kafka was especially sensitive to, and this is what gives his work such prophetic character.
What we have in this passage is on the one hand the perspective of the father (the children as ungrateful, spoiled…). On the other hand we have the perspective of the son. These are perspectives that circulate in the text. But there is also the perspective of the text, the way it’s form allows both of these perspectives to emerge in tension.
A few pages later in the diary Kafka describes what he calls a minor literature and says it must have “Zusammenhang mit Politik” (233) (“connection to the political”). This does not mean that it must be political in content. Rather it must still be literature, hence it must work through its form. It cannot, for example a pamphlet declaring one’s political sympathies). Then it would no longer be literature, but just a political standpoint. So the political in this sense have to do with form. In this example, the way that Kafka’s description brings two set of facts into tension with each other. It is not about facts on one side and fiction on the other. Both are facts. Yet, the purpose of literature (fiction) is precisely top allow both of these facts into perspective, the effect is also a certain questioning of what a fact “is” to begin with (for example how it is used). The political here is precisely to bring in both of these fathers (the stern and the superego one) as a two perspectives of and in the same reality, and to declare both of them “facts”. This in turn opens up what is to count as a fact to begin with, but too “allow the equally real fact”, this very question is itself the most political one.
Bibliography:
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Kafka, Franz. Tagebücher. Band 1: 1909–1912. Herausgegeben von Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller und Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1990
