Kafka’s Spaces: A Telephonic Journey

Toets 1 voor Nederlands. Press 2 for English. If the fire alarm is going off, or you smell gas, press 1. We offer an easy exit for emergencies, but if you fail to qualify, you will be moved to the back of the line. Do you feel welcome? We will try to help you as soon as we can. If you require physical assistance, press 2. Please make sure to go the right way. If you are confused about any of the paperwork we sent you, please press 3.

Have you tried filling in everything in a quiet room, in an orderly manner? Did you make sure to fill in everything by yourself? Consistency is key. If you take control and read quickly, read well, write well and fluently, you should be able to fill it in. Is there anything you are missing? “[W]hy did I mention this official letter only now, I wrote back: because I had only now remembered it, Sordini: that was most remarkable, I: it was not at all remarkable in so long-drawn-out an affair, Sordini: yes it was remarkable, because the letter I had remembered did not exist, I: of course it did not exist, the whole file had been lost, Sordini: but there ought to be a note about that first letter and there was none” (Kafka 58). Just get your things in order, real or not. Press 1 if you have a question about the first section of the paperwork. Press 2 if you have a question about the second section of the paperwork. Press 3 if you have a question about the appendices. Press 4 if you have a question about the maps.

The maps are easy to navigate, if you just pay attention. You should be applying a rational lens and focus. It would be terrible if you couldn’t – didn’t have the right frame of mind; didn’t try hard enough. And you couldn’t, could you? “Of course I’m ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts” (Kafka 51). Finally, some good news. Do you accept ultimate responsibility for filling everything in correctly, and agree to face the consequences for any mistakes at hand? Certain spaces are only for the rational. Press 1 to confirm.

Press 1 to confirm.

Press 1 to confirm.

Press 1 if your question is about current construction work. Press 2 if your question concerns land surveys. If you have lost your way, you are expected to return to the beginning – notwithstanding the hermeneutic transience of space, of course. Have you tried just reinterpreting the borders that hold you in tow (Soja 1-2)? It’s a fun activity that should diffuse your frustration, and make you more at peace with the current state of things. You could even publish it!

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Not all spaces are physical ones, of which our telephonic labyrinth is evidence. Branching off and turning you around, their paving is the rational, the bureaucratic. Making the unspoken and implied concrete and building its walls upon it. Walls are only suggestions, but imperturbable ones that insist. There is no nature here – just walls upon walls upon walls. Certainly, shaped like trees when this is demanded of them. But ultimately, these woods are telephonic. The only way is through, succumbing to the bureaucratic episteme of a nightmare that will not end.

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It has been hours, and I have lost my way. Twice before have I attempted to accept – no, internalise these ideologies. Radical refusal is no longer possible when you need to speak to an employee, and there are 10 people waiting before you. While ignorance has long been a refuge, an awareness is forced upon you, of one of the turning gyres that feed on an all-encompassing air of the Rational. You have to participate, or you cannot return your keys; you cannot get a mechanic to come to your house to rewire the internet. Refusal is a luxury of those already on the edge, having made it all their own and stepping to the side.

In Kafka’s The Castle, the Kafkaesque is a clash between the rationalist land surveyor and the irrational, mystical bureaucracy he has lost himself in. But its unsettling mirror-image is also shining through: a land surveyor with no history thrown into the bureaucratic, a mystical capitalism-as-God. How can you, I, K., escape the logic of capitalism, the logic of reason?

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Maybe we should turn to play instead, like those successfully inhabiting the shifting, haunting House of Leaves: “[t]he children … just accepted it. They raced through the closet. They played in it. They inhabited it. They denied the paradox by swallowing it whole” (Danielewski 39). Aphoristic though it may appear, this might be a useful musing. Capitalist space is inexhaustible and, J.M. Bernstein () teaches us, exhausted (242): secularisation fully saturated, collapsing into meaninglessness. A useless passage through its own, endless passages. We need to break out, climb the walls. Pull them apart – try to find holes in-between the tightest bricks, cemented together by the most recent variations on Aristotelean logic. Occupy hermeneutic fragility, and make it our own.

By embracing the myth of the telephonic, materialising its maze, you are being pushed forward, pushing yourself forward. From one alley into the next, hallways increasingly tight. You’re rational; you need to force your way through. Gradually, you accept it – succumb to the demands of the world; deny them by swallowing them whole. The circulation of the ocean takes an idea and spreads it around. All drops of water, from rain to clouds to the glass in your windowsill, cannot refrain.

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This piece was written during and after standing in phone queues from Lieven de Key and Youfone. The former couldn’t help me – I had to wait 30 minutes, three times over. With the latter, my telephonic journey is, to my distress, still in progress.