Amerika or The Man who D issapeared Ship Dreadfully large ship Innumerable small rooms corridors constantly branching off short flights of stairs always followed by others Lost in a labyrinth ID: 622612
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Slide1
Uncanny Aesthetics in Kafka’s Amerika or The Man who DissapearedSlide2
Ship‘Dreadfully large ship’ ‘Innumerable small rooms, corridors constantly branching off, short flights of stairs always followed by others.
Lost in a labyrinth Slide3
Uncle’s HouseSix floors; three underground levels; two elevators; ten offices.
Process of ‘
defamiliarization
’.
‘(…) and from morning to evening and amid the dreams of the night there passed along this street an incessant bustle of traffic, which looked from above like a confused, constantly self-renewing medley of distorted human shapes (…) as though a glass pane covering the street’Slide4
Mr Pollunder’s House‘As only the lower part of the house was illuminated, one could not tell quite how high it was’
‘They suddenly heard
Mr
Green calling down from the top step’; ‘beginning to mount the steps’; ‘as they mounted the steps’Slide5
Mr Pollunder’s House‘Made the inconvenient presence of
Mr
Green doubly regrettable’
‘The smoke from
Mr
Green’s cigar (…) spread through the room, carrying Green’s influence even into the corners and crannies that he himself would never enter’Slide6
Mr Pollunder’s House‘The door of my room is the fourth, counting from this door, on this side of the corridor. So you go past three more doors and the one you get to then is the right one’
‘Lying down had already become unbearable’
‘Slow progress, which made the way seem twice as long’Slide7
Mr Pollunder’s House‘As the corridor seemed never-ending, and no window anywhere afforded a view, Karl was already thinking that he might be going in a circle round the whole house’Slide8
Freud‘One may, for instance, have lost one’s way in the woods, perhaps after being overtaken by gof, and, despite all one’s efforts to find a marked or familiar path, one comes back again and again to the same spot (…) Or one may be groping around the dark in an unfamiliar room, searching for the door or the light-switch and repeatedly colliding with the same piece of furniture’
(“The Uncanny”)Slide9
Hotel OccidentalThirty elevators; many rooms, dining-rooms, gaming-rooms; seven floors.
‘all the entrances to the hotel, that is, this main entrance, the three middle entrances, and the ten side entrances, to say nothing of the innumerable small doors and exits without doors’Slide10
Hotel Occidental‘Don’t you know that even the slightest absence from duty has to be reported in the Head Waiter’s office?’Slide11
Conclusion: Freud and Kafka‘Unintentional return’ (“The Uncanny”)‘The impulsion to repeat’
‘Anything that can remind us of this inner compulsion to repeat is perceived as uncanny’