Odradek: Kafka’s Name for the Nameless

The short story “The Cares of a Family Man” seems to be a miniature encapsulation of Kafka’s world. The story’s space belongs to the world of the home, which is dominated by the law of the father. Although the father only makes an appearance in the title and is not present in the story as an actual figure, he nevertheless serves as the prism through which the story is told. As the one who is in charge of the economy of the law, the father’s chief concern is the disturbing presence of Odradek in this domestic sphere. Yet why does Odradek awaken the father’s concern, or — in the spirit of Heidegger — his anxiety? The first reason must be its frenzy, its being in constant movement. Odradek cannot be caught, nor even defined, since beyond its frenetic fluttering, it is also engaged in an equally frenetic shifting between categories, as it moves from being described as a word, an object, a living being and a human being.

Odradek’s Distortion

The story thus presents the reader with a riddle — what is Odradek? Is it a signifier or a signified? Inanimate or animate? Is it merely alive, or is it also a living being who speaks (zoon logon)? Odradek is all of these things and none of them. Just as it wanders throughout the house, so it vacillates between these categorical distinctions. This intra-categorical vacillation is also present on the level of single statements, such as the following one: “no one, of course, would occupy himself with such studies if there were not a creature called Odradek. At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it.” ¹ This statement starts with the assertion that Odradek is a creature, and concludes with its comparison to a spool of thread, i.e., an inanimate object. A creature clearly cannot resemble an object, and certainly cannot be an object.

The same vacillation is also apparent in the statement concerning Odradek’s muteness: “often he stays mute for a long time, as wooden as his appearance.” ² Clearly, Odradek’s human muteness and the muteness of wood are not comparable, since muteness could be ascribed only to one who can speak. Wood cannot speak, and therefore cannot be mute. The association of Odradek to wood by means of the common denominator of muteness results in its demotion to the status of an object, or alternately, to that of a hybrid creature made of wood rather than flesh and blood, such as Pinocchio.

This vacillation reaches its climax with the discussion concerning the possibility of Odradek’s death: “Can he possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out.” ³ Life is described here in terms of activity and destiny, whereas death is described as the result of attrition stemming from this activity and leading to annihilation. Yet can death in fact be viewed as the result of attrition? Indeed, the body slowly atrophies in the course of life, as it wears out and grows older. At the same time, it is known that, at least biologically, aging is a mechanism of cellular self-destruction rather than a natural process of wear and tear. The obvious conclusion is that the discussion of Odradek’s death is more appropriate for an inanimate object than for a living organism. This is so, since an object is something created to serve a certain function; it wears out in the process of being used; and finally, it is discarded once it no longer serves its purpose. Hence the paradoxical stance of ascribing death to an object that can fall apart, but cannot die. The discussion of death in terms of purposefulness thus leads to the objectification of death. The discussion of Odradek’s death, which is meant to support its categorization as a human creature, demotes it to the status of an object.

Yet it seems that what is even more worrisome than Odradek’s vacillation between categories is its own self-distortion. According to Benjamin, “Odradek is the form which things assume in oblivion. They are distorted.” ⁴ The primordial image of distortion, as Benjamin argues, characterizes Kafka’s literary world as a whole. It is present in Gregor Samsa, who becomes an insect, and in the crossbreed lamb-kitten. More than anything, this distortion is evident in the figure of the hunchback with his bowed head. The bowing of the head, according to Benjamin, is the most prevalent bodily gesture in Kafka’s oeuvre. It can be found in the judges bowing their heads from fatigue; or the audience members bowing their heads due to the tribune’s low ceiling. Benjamin ties this gesture of bowing to the above-mentioned figure of the hunchback. According to Benjamin, “This little man is at home in distorted life,” ⁵ just like the figures populating Kafka’s world. Benjamin even identifies the distorted laughter of the hunchback with the laughter of Odradek, which is no less distorted.

However, one must pause momentarily in order to wonder what modus of distortion is at stake here. There is no dispute concerning Odradek’s distortion. Yet what if this distortion were to be understood in a structural rather than a material context, as Benjamin does? In other words, what if the said distortion were to be identified not as actually present in Odradek’s body, but rather, with the distortion that Odradek’s presence admits into the world of the home? What if Odradek’s distortion were to be identified with the distortion of the law of the father, which constitutes the economies regulating the world of the home?

Although the cares of the family man are related to distortion, it is not the cares themselves that are distorted, as Benjamin argues; rather, it is their object of concern that is distorted. One can see the father’s concern as an appropriate response to Odradek, as the one which constantly distorts the cohesiveness of the economies that regulate the home.

Nor can one ignore the fact that Odradek’s disruption of the law of the father also carries an autobiographical charge, echoing its disruption by Kafka himself. This autobiographical dimension is also accompanied by a performative dimension, since the very act of writing about Odradek as a disruptive being, itself disrupts the life trajectory of a normative subject guided by the law of the father. In other words, rather than marrying and fathering children, Kafka wastes his time writing stories about Odradek and other distorted creatures, which reflect his stance in relation to the law of the father.

Signifier without Signified

Moreover, we have yet to speak of those economies that are disrupted by the uninvited guest called Odradek. Chief among these economies is that of language, which strives to supply at least one signifier for each and every signified, in an attempt to ensure that not even a single signified will elude signification — or, as Barthes puts it: it is either that everything signifies or that nothing signifies.

Odradek’s linguistic disruption is evident, first and foremost, in the signifier denoting its name, which should first be viewed in a strictly material context in terms of a vocal material: this is a signifier which is easy to pronounce due to the alliteration involving the consonant d, and thus alludes to some sort of affinity with the language of children. It thus joins other signifiers marked by an alliteration, which are similarly related to the language of children — such as the signifier “dada,” which serves as the name of an avant-garde art movement, or the signifier “fort-da,” that is mentioned by Freud. The affinity with the language of children is also notable in terms of Odradek’s abject dimension, due to its association with the word drek, meaning “litter” in both German and Yiddish. Just as material litter is disposed of from the economy of the home, so the signifier Odradek — or perhaps better “Odra-drek” — is semiotic litter disposed by the economy of language.

As for its meaning, Odradek can seemingly be included within the group of proper Slavic names that carry the suffix “ek,” such as Vladek, Yurek, or Chapek. Yet it quickly becomes evident that Odradek cannot be included within this group, if only for the simple reason that there is no such name in the Lang — the Saussurean term for the common inventory of signifiers accepted by a given linguistic community. The apparent conclusion is that this name is the result of the linguistic liberty that Kafka assumes — the liberty to invent a new signifier. In this sense, the signifier Odradek can be viewed as belonging to a private language spoken by a single speaker, whose name is Franz Kafka.

As an invented signifier, and in the absence of a signified to which it refers, Odradek is also an empty signifier, and is thus meaningless. And since it is meaningless, it could be discerned from the signifiers “dada” and “fort-da” which, despite their childish character, still carry some sort of meaning: “dada” is the equivalent of the English “Daddy”; whereas the German “fort-da” is composed of the signifier “fort,” meaning “away,” and the signifier “da,” meaning “there.” Nor can one ignore the fact that the form of the wooden reel that Freud’s grandson throws over and over again in his mother’s absence, while repeatedly pronouncing this expression, resembles the description of Odradek.

The disruption introduced by Odradek can thus be ascribed to a disruption to the process of meaning production. In a normative process, meaning is produced by the transit from the signifier, which is abandoned, to the signified it denotes. As Paul Valéry notes, the act of signification resembles a ladder that is abandoned immediately after being used. Thus, for instance, the expression “Do you have a light?” acquires its meaning in the moment in which the addressee of the interlocution hands the speaker a lit match. ⁶ Once this expression has been used, there is nothing more to do with it beside abandoning it. However, one could think of a situation wherein the transition from the signifier to the signified is delayed or complicated. In such a situation, the suspension of the transition to the signified involves a lingering of sorts on the signifier itself, which is thus disclosed in the fullness of its vocal materiality. This lingering and disclosure is, according to Valéry, the essence of poetic language. The case of Odradek is much more severe: the signifier does not delay the transition to the signified, but rather disables it completely, since it does not point to any distinct signified to begin with.

Odradek not only disrupts the process of meaning production, but also undermines the validity of language’s underlying assumptions. One such assumption, which is related to the signifier, is that there is no signifier that does not point to at least one signified; the other assumption, which is related to the signified, is that there exists no signified that lacks a signifier.

The first assumption defiantly ignores an entire group of signifiers devoid of signifieds. As noted, this group includes invented signifiers, whose quantity is potentially infinite, given that anyone can invent as many signifiers as they please. This group also includes the register of semiotic signifiers, as Kristeva calls them, which are characteristic of the pre-Oedipal use of language. These include, among others, an entire range of vocalizations — such as sighs of enjoyment and bitter weeping — which, while they have no distinct signified, are still not entirely devoid of meaning. This group also includes poetic language, already referred to above, as well as the language of children, which involves an echolalic use of signifiers and strange linguistic inventions of different kinds. Such usages and inventions often have an abject dimension, since the language of children is still not subordinate to the authority of the law of the father, which regulates language. This group of signifiers also includes Odradek, as an invented signifier that resonates with the language of abjection and with that of children. As such, it resembles the word pallaksch, which the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin mumbled in his moments of madness. The meaning of this word remains unresolved, so that it can be seen indeed as a signifier pointing to the loss of meaning as such.

Given this last assumption, one could, in principle, provide a signifier for every existing signified. Hence, there is no signified that can elude signification. This assumption is based on two arguments: the first — which is ontological in character — is that signifieds maintain their identity, so that it is impossible for one signified to vacillate between several identities; nor is it possible for it not to have a distinct identity to begin with (which is essentially a Heraclitean situation). The second argument — which is epistemological in character — is that each given signified can be recognized either directly or with the assistance of observational apparatuses. Thus, if there is a signified that has not yet been recognized — like distant stars or insects in the Amazon Rainforest — it is only a question of time until it is recognized and given signification. This argument thus negates the possible existence of a signified whose very nature precludes its being recognized, and hence marked by signification.

These are the very assumptions that are undermined by Odradek: from an ontological perspective, Odradek does not maintain its identity, since it vacillates between existence as an inanimate object, as a living being, and as a living being who speaks (zoon logon). From an epistemological perspective, Odradek eludes observation and thus also recognition, wandering as it does between different locations within the house. Its existence thus questions the very assumption that any signified can, in principle, be given signification.

Moreover, Odradek could be viewed as a delegate of an entire sphere that has not yet been recognized and given signification. This sphere, moreover, is — by its very definition — incapable of being recognized and given signification whatsoever. Odradek is thus the name of a linguistic hospitality that severs, in different modes, the bondage between the signifier and the signified, and thus opens up a rift within the hermetic array of signifiers. In this way, it allows for the hospitality of the nameless, which cannot be included in the economy of language.

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1. Franz Kafka, “The Cares of a Family Man,” In The Complete Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (Schocken Books, 1971), 428↩︎

2. Ibid.↩︎

3. Ibid.↩︎

4. Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka,” In Selected Writings Vol. 2, Part 2 1931–1934, trans. Rodney Livingstone, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland & Gary Smith (Harvard University Press), 811.↩︎

5. Ibid.↩︎

6. Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” The American Poetry Review 36, no. 2 (2007).↩︎