Franz Kafka : la letteratura tra serie complementare freudiana e meccanica quantistica

Kafkas formal strategies of writing sustain seemingly incompatible mental states; as such they do work uncanny, i. e. disquieting, incongruous and foolish all in one. This peculiar position of Kafkas narrative techniques is explored in connection with Quantum Mechanics and Freudian Conscious Complementary Series (1938). Starting from a paradoxical apologue of 1917, which was posthumously published by Max Brod, the present essay investigates Kafkas rhetorical and stylistic devices as a corresponding momentum, a different way of keeping in touch with the imperceptibly small and with invisible phenomena of microscopic as well as unconscious processes in comparison with Wirklichkeit and ordinary matter. Kafkas rhetorical strategies are consequently compared to the idea of complementarity as well as to the “observer effect” which seems to undermine the existence of an objective world. The paradoxical apologue Ein alltäglicher Vorfall / An everyday occurrence (known in English as A common experience) is explored with the aim of showing how retroactive interferences affect reception and translation, so that the “observer effect” results in superpositions of mental states and attitudes disorienting our certitudes and displacing our convictions. Complementarity is hence thematised as it manifests itself under the twofold guise of physical laws and Freudian conscious complementary series (1938) in its productive engagement with the act of writing. In a counter-intuitive twist Kafkas writing strategies foreshadow quantum superposition and entanglement, where both QM and Freudian complementary series (1938) hold onto two mutually exclusive ideas and representations at the same time (the double-slit experiment). The present paper argues that Kafkas stylistic strategies in writing are expression of these duality relations. The Freudian complementary series (1938) as well as Bionian psychoanalytic investigations of the Uncertainty Principle maintain the same position as for Truth, one of Kafkas favourite subjects to meditate and to write upon and one of the most discussed postulates of QM.