Over at Long Sunday, Amie writes:
As you know the title of the text in which Odradek appears is translated as 'The Cares of a Family Man', which is suggestive enough, it being a matter of Kafka. A somewhat more literal translation of the German 'Die Sorge eines Hausvaters' would be 'Thhe Concern of a House Father.' The House Father, who is the narrator, is concerned for he just cannot account for or settle accounts with this strange 'being' of wood and thread who keeps unraveling all accounts and laughs when called to account for itself! (Is it also Kafka's laughter?)Odradek is the unclassifiable, anachronistic thing, the fugitive objet, that prevents the House Father setting his house in order. Its presence results in - or facilitates - a kind of postponement which is perhaps glossed also by this passage:
'"I could conceive of another Abraham - to be sure, he would never get to be a patriarch or even an old-clothes dealer -, an Abraham who would be prepared to satisfy the demands for a sacrifice immediately, with the promptness of a waiter, but would be unable to bring it off because he cannot get away, being indispensable; the household needs him, there is always something or other to take care of, the house is never ready; but without having his house ready, without having something to fal back on, he cannot leave - this the Bible also realised, for it says: " He set his house in order"'
n.b., If anyone has an electronic copy of Zizek's "Odradek as a Political Category", I'd be curious to see it.
2 comments:
What, no sidebar link to LS?
No, I had a huge argument with one of them about football when we met up at the pub. One of us was glassed in the end.
The links were cut and pasted from the old template, except the links at the top, in cluding LS, notes on rhetoric, critical dictionary et al were missed off by accident and will be replaced sooon.
Take care M.
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