Essay print-out

narrated by Michal Kubis © January 2014.

‘

‘This place is not my home’ or

Reading The Trial as a (socio-psychological) critique of Modernity An exploration of ‘the dangerous proximity between phobia and reason’

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A. Vidler, Warped Space, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001, p.49

Narrated by Michal Kubis © January 2014.

Contents

1. The prophecy: Bureaucracy à la Weber ……………………………………………………………………………………… 2 2. Setting the Scene: A divided age …………………………………………………………………………………………….…… 3 3. Intermezzo: The Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…… 5 4. Closing in: A psychoanalysis of K ………………………………………………………………….……………………………… 6 5. An architectural dissection ………………………………………………………………………………….……………………… 7

6. Everything under control …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..… 8 . A Modernist city (The story of a utopia) ………..…………………………………………………………………………..… 9 . Abstract space …………………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………….… 10 . Topographies of despair …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..… 11

7. The womb turns alien ………………………………………..…………………………………………..……………………….… 12 .The Uncanny …..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 .The Absurd & The Labyrinthine ….…………………………………………………………………………………………….… 13

8. Lust and Fear ..…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 15 . Haptics of Modernity ..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..… 15 . Concealment and Subversion …………………………………………………………………………………………………..… 16 . The Synthesis ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…... 17

9. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………....… 18

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The Trial, dir. Orson Welles, 1962

cover image - Magritte: Golconda (1953)

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1. The prophecy: Bureaucracy à la Weber

The bureaucracy could be seen as a perfect embodiment of such system.

In 1922, Economy and Society – the opus magnum of the sociologist Max Weber was posthumously published. In this seminal work, Weber sketches (a practically dystopian) vision of a society deeply infested with bureaucracy which, he argues, is ’the distinctive mark of the modern era’4 and ‘is technically superior to all other forms of administration, much as a machine is superior to handicraft methods.’5 Some of the aspects he outlines are:

1. Normalization: ‘the essence of bureaucratic organization is to turn past novelties into present routines.’ 6 2. Quantification: ‘the performance of each individual worker is mathematically measured, each man becomes a little cog in the machine and, aware of this, his one preoccupation is whether he can become a bigger cog’7 3.

Rationalization: ‘[The calculability of decision-making] and with it its appropriateness for capitalism8 is the more fully realized (…) the more completely it succeeds in achieving the exclusion of love, hatred, and every purely personal, especially irrational and incalculable, feeling from the execution of official tasks.‘ 9

4. Depersonalization: ‘[modern men] sacrificed their personal desires and predilections to the impersonal goals and procedures that governed the whole.’ 10 5. Mechanization: ‘The modern judge […] is a vending machine into which the pleadings are inserted together with the fee and which then disgorges the judgment together with the reasons mechanically derived from the Code.’11

According to Weber, this is a description of an ‘ideal’ form of bureaucracy, not necessarily corresponding to present reality. One may thus ask - how would such a world look like? Let’s rewind eight years back – when Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’ was written – which can be considered an exemplar embodiment of the Weberian world.

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as paraphrased in: H.Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1991, p.21 P. Stapley, Max Weber – Bureaucracy, Introduction to Sociology, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, 2010 5 Ibid 6 Professionalization, Encyclopaedia Britannica 7 Stapley, op. cit.

8 Although, the notion of bureaucracy needs not necessarily be linked to capitalism, as its very successful employment by both the Fascists in Germany and communists in Soviet Russia (Hitler and Stalin) testify.

9 Stapley, op. cit.

10 Ibid 11 Ibid 4

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2. Setting the Scene: A divided age

It’s 1914. Franz Kafka starts writing The Trial. The place is Prague, part of the multiethnic AustroHungarian Empire, a melting pot of cultures and ideas. In the Empire’s capital Vienna, the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud are just being published, Schoenberg experiments with atonal music and overall a new aesthetic of modernity is being defined by artists and architects, breaking with all traditions, epitomized by the figure of the 84-year-old emperor Franz Joseph.12 The new aesthetic is inspired by the automobile, being mass-produced by Henry Ford in his massive new plants in the US, where he fuses the Scientific Management studies of Frederick Taylor with his own innovation of the production line – enabling him to manufacture cars faster and cheaper. In this generation, the Efficiency Movement spreads throughout all spheres of life, from industrial production to the government of corporations, nations, societies and individuals.

The machine is a perfect embodiment of this spirit, adopted as an almost universal point of reference for every aspect of life – including the human being, as conceived by the followers of Pavlov and eventually the behaviourists;13 and imitated and parodied in artworks such as À Nous La Liberte (1931) and Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) or exploited by the surrealists through automatic writing and art.14

. À Nous La Liberte (1931)

. Un Chien Andalou (1929)

These phenomena and the resultant new living conditions provided also a target for more serious critique, ranging from the various Marxist intellectuals (giving eventually birth to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and the Situationists15); to sociologists such as Max Weber and philosophers of existentialism – exemplified by Camus and Sartre.

On the other hand, there were those who openly embraced this modernity and its aesthetics – starting with the Italian Futurists16 and the industrially-inspired works such as Ballet Mécanique (1923) or Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) – whose celebration of machine and movement 12

For a chronological overview of these and other relevant events, see the Timeline in the Appendix.

A Clockwork Orange is a great portrayal of such principles taken to extreme.

14 Breton’s Les Champs Magnétiques, the first ‘automatic’ book is published in 1920.

15 with their critique of mass society and culture 16 Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto is published in 1909 13

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was later adopted by the pioneers of modern architecture – above all Le Corbusier, with his ‘machines for living’; drawing on the aesthetics of simplicity, celebrated earlier by yet another Viennese – Adolf Loos.17 Adding that 1914 was the year when the Great War erupted, it was definitely a time of turbulent change.

After the War, the balance of power in Europe is being shifted and the world goes from a global Depression of the late 1920s, through yet another war into the Golden Age of Capitalism and eventual decline again, in the 1970s. Thanks to these crises, various new economical theories are being developed and tested – among them the Keynesian model endorsing increased spending, exploding the European and US economy into the post-war boom era.18 At this time, living standards dramatically rise, the middle-class swells and the white-collar workers (migrating into cities) finally outnumber those who make products.19 This, however, is another era, unlike the milieu of Kafka’s Prague. It is the context for his novel’s very up-to-date adaptation, created by Orson Welles in 1962. Although the era is different, much of the problematique these two works address appears to be the same. However, as I will show in this essay, there are certain crucial points of departure from the original, which might prove key to understanding the issues Welles attempts to address.

Both Trials portray an individual’s alienation from the system (whether conceived as a WeberianMarxist bureaucratic apparatus of the State or a godless world of Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett).

For both works, the spatial representation, as well as the overall logic of the narrative’s flow are essential in conveying the message (as it might be for Lewis Caroll). The Trial, as explicitly stated by Orson Welles at the film’s very beginning, follows the logic of a dream.

. Bell Aircraft Corporation (1944)

. The Society of the Spectacle (1973)

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Ornament and Crime is published in 1910 Although, the extent to which this is due to Keynesian policies is debated 19 offices soon become known as ’paper factories‘ 18

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3. Intermezzo: The Abstract

As my argument runs, I will attempt to show that the view of modernity outlined by Weber is also paralleled in architectural and sociological discourse of the time. To illustrate this, I will use scenes from the filmic version of The Trial, as my point of focus. To analyse these scenes, I will be using predominantly the critical lens of Henri Lefebvre, Albert Camus and Sigmund Freud, as well as architectural theories collated in books by Anthony Vidler.

With the assistance of these, I will endeavour to establish a relationship between the psychological conditions of Kafka’s hero and the spaces portrayed in Orson Welles’ film – using this link as an illustration of the reciprocal relationship between the urban spaces of modernity and psychological conditions of its populace. Put (perhaps too) simply, the thesis is – as the spaces of The Trial shape K, so the metropolis shapes us.20 My observations are tied to the period in which the two versions of this story take place; which is one I am interested in and think is crucial in understanding analogous conditions of today. The resultant work can be seen as an overlap between sociology, psychology and architecture – linking these in a (to some extent) causal relationship. Although I believe these disciplines to be essential in understanding The Trial, my insight into them is naturally not too comprehensive and should not be taken as definitive.

Disclaimer It happens that several of the theorists, through whose lens I have examined the artwork represent a Marxist, existentialist or another ideological standpoint. Although I find such theories useful in understanding the problematique, as well as interesting; this does not mean that I necessarily agree with or subscribe to any of these.

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Although, the connotations of such phrase are perhaps too deterministic.

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4. Closing in: A psychoanalysis of K

The Trial’s main hero, Josef K, is a conformist figure, a career climber, who thinks himself rational and in conformity to the System. As he, however, soon finds, he is being crushed on one hand by the bureaucratic facelessness of the very system he is trying to be a productive member of, on the other by various temptations that hinder the progress of his trial. These two elements are represented respectively by the various (almost exclusively male) legal personages and several females (femme fatales).

If The Trial is, indeed, a dream, both factors can be seen as externalized elements of K’s psyche, representing the clash between his conformity-demanding superego and its subversive antagonist – the id, screaming for instant gratification of its (primarily sexual) desires, which at times sharply clash with K’s rational judgement and directly inhibit the progress of his trial.22 In opposition stands the superego, which, following Freud23, creates a moral ideal his ego cannot live up to, making K feel constant guilt, even in cases there is nothing to be blamed for.24 He is thus doubly prosecuted – by his own (existential) guilt as well as by the system itself. Or are these two facets of the same coin?

The spaces in The Trial, instead of being objective entities, could thus also be read as mental projections of K’s psyche. Should The Trial then be seen as the biography of a peculiar individual, such as Kafka undoubtedly was,25 or can we read in his hero’s character something more – perhaps the portrait of a general psychological condition of the modern individual? The overall consensus seems to support this reading. After all, the usage of ‘K’ instead of a proper surname seems to deliberately suggest a degree of generality.

In an analogous way, Albert Camus, an admirer of Kafka, in his Myth of Sisyphus,26 uses the hero’s ‘ceaseless and pointless toil’ as ‘a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices.’27 Likewise then, one can read The Trial as a portrait of, what is in the words of Anthony Vidler ‘…a nervous and feverish population, overexcited and enervated.’28 As Camus affirms - ‘ The nature of art is to bind the general to the particular.’ 29

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as paraphrased in: Vidler, Warped Space, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001, p.46 as we can see, for example, in The Advocate sequence (Scene 14) – when K wanders off to make love with his maid Leni 23 S. Freud, The Ego and The Id, The Hogarth Press, Toronto, 1961 24 as K confesses in his neighbour (Ms. Burstner)’s room (Scene 4) – in yet another moment of intimacy 25 with numerous personal issues and complexes that allegedly might have informed his novels 26 A. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage, New York, 1991 27 Chapter 4: The Myth of Sisyphus, Rochester Public Schools 28 Vidler, 2001, p.25 29 Camus, 1991, p.86 22

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5. An architectural dissection

In terms of spaces presented in Wells’ film, the technique can be seen as analogous to the story ‘Councillor Krespel’ by E.T.A. Hoffman, where the structure of Krespel’s house ‘coincides with the mood of the story and proposes thereby a method for its interpretation.’31 I propose, therefore, a careful analysis of these spaces. Next, I will attempt to (re-)construct a psychological reading of selected filmic spaces of The Trial, as perceived by Josef K – judging by the mental and physical effects these have on him.

For this study, I chose two diametrically different types of setting – which, as I will argue, somewhat correspond to the psychological duality outlined in the previous section; and I will examine some of the antithetical visual and connotational characteristics they evoke. As a point of departure, I will use assertions by Vidler and Benjamin, who both identify a certain kind of duality present in the modern metropolis. Furthermore, Vidler links these spatial qualities to the psychological conditions of the modern individual. The notable aspects of this duality are: 1.

mode of primary perception: ‘Buildings are received twofold: through how they are used and how they are perceived. Or to put it a better way: in a tactile fashion and in an optical fashion.’32

2. degree of openness: ‘The successive closing and sudden opening of the city, its passage so to speak from claustrophobia to agoraphobia, had the effect of fostering the veritable cause of spatial fear.’33 3.

degree of proximity: ‘[neurosis is] a product of the rapid oscillation between two characteristic moods of urban life: the over-close identification with things and too great distance from them.’34

In a strikingly similar fashion, in the film we get two antithetical spatial treatments – the haptic spaces of proximity and the alienating space of distance – one seemingly reinforcing the sense of individuality the other seems so easily to suppress. As I will argue, the agoraphobic scene seem to represent the excruciating power of the System, while the claustrophobic ones the realm of the Individual. The oscillation between the two conditions is reinforced throughout the film, where the character (and his esteem) is being stretched and compressed by various out-of-scale elements – such as extremely low ceilings and giant doorways.

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as quoted by Vidler, 2001, p.66 A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992, p.32 32 W. Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Penguin Books, London, 2008 [kindle edition], loc.492 33 Vidler, 2001, p.32 34 Vidler, 2001, p.68 31

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6. Everything under control

. K’s workplace: the machinery in action (Scene 5)

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As a representative of the visual realm of power, K’s workplace lends itself a perfect example. This space can be seen as a visual embodiment of everything the ideal bureaucracy stands for. In the film, this space is evocative of a production hall. To film the sequence, an actual factory space in Yugoslavia was rented, with 850 actors36 hired to work at identical desks. We hear a mechanical cacophony of typing37 echoing throughout the hall.

What one immediately thinks of is efficiency and repetition - the office is seen as a large production unit, a Fordist machine for manufacture of standardized elements – a fitting model of a bureaucratic society. It is quite unsurprising that in such an environment, the subject’s identity will be threatened.

‘Repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness, (…) the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field’, Lefebvre38 affirms.

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Scene number refers to the ‘Map of The Trial’ in the Appendix.

J. Adams, Orson Welles's 'The Trial': Film Noir and the Kafkaesque (Critical Essay),West Chester University, 1999 37 It is interesting to compare this with the scene in J. Wright’s film adaptation of Anna Karenina (2012), where the Russian bureaucrats stamp papers in a relentlessly orchestrated ballet.

38 Lefebvre, 1991, p.85 36

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This notion of repetition39 can be linked to the Freudian concept of death drive – which is an impulse for regression towards a more elementary state of (non-)being, logically resulting in the death wish.40 Could this be the death of individuality, the annihilation of Self? The fear of death and sense of awe can be also associated with Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime,41 whose effects are enhanced through repetition and the illusion of infinity. Is this fear the notion Welles is trying to communicate or is the set a commentary on the system itself – a reverence for the machine, in line with the early-modern Futurist-oriented conceptions?

A Modernist city (The story of a utopia)

In sensory terms, the visual aspect takes precedence, conforming to the model of efficiency and clarity that the Modernists pioneered in their architecture. Everything that does not conform to this model is feared and suppressed. ‘It is assumed that absurdity and obscurity, which are treated as aspects of the same thing, may be dissipated.’43 The modernist endeavours to defeat the obscurity of the chaotic medieval town can be seen as an attempt at mastering the natural forces by conceptualizing them – supplying understanding and thus power, in an attempt to achieve a sense of security for the modern subject.44 As Vidler says, the aim was ’to divest the things of the external world of their caprice and obscurity, to endow them with a regularity represented in geometric abstraction.’45 The result? ‘The fact is that around 1910 a certain space was shattered.’46

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which Freud calls the repetition compulsion S. Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Acheron Press, Penguin Books, London, 2003 41 E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, OUP, Oxford, 1990 42 as paraphrased in Vidler, 2001, p.69 43 Lefebvre, 1991, p.28 44 ‘…unreliable perceptual images of the world that are (…) gradually remodeled into conceptual images.’ - Vidler, 2001, p.45; ‘In recent times, a series of tactical and strategic operations have been undertaken with a view to the establishment (…) of a sort of impregnable fortress of knowledge (…) assigning priority to what is known or seen over what is lived.’Lefebvre, 1991, p.60 45 Vidler, 2001, p.44 (paraphrasing W.Worringer) 46 Lefebvre, 1991, p.25; ‘Euclidian and perspectivist space have disappeared as systems of reference, along with other former ‘commonplaces’ such as the town, history, paternity, the tonal system in music, traditional morality and so forth.’

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. Le Corbusier: Ville Contemporaine (1922)

Abstract space According to Lefebvre, these modernist efforts culminate in what he calls Abstract space, which has emerged as a manifestation of the capitalist mode of production. In short, according to Lefebvre, abstract space homogenizes and neutralizes differences,47 as the bureaucratic apparatus in The Trial turns people into faceless cogs. It creates a sterile and homogenous environment, which is suppressive to expressions of spontaneity and subjectivity and relegates all that is subversive, sensual and personal into what it dubs the unconscious.48 Thus the 20th century office develops towards the Fordist open plan.49 The office can be read as an embodiment of the ideal capitalist space. As Lefebvre claims, ‘This space is founded on the vast network of banks, business centres and major productive entities…’50 Indeed, Josef K’s workplace is a bank and thus a perfect illustration of the spatial influences of this system. In conclusion, this space can be seen as a cosmological representation of a perfectly rational, ordered and efficient universe a cosmology of the Fordist stage of capitalism.

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‘…formal and quantitative, it erases distinctions…’ - Ibid, p.49 Ibid, p.49; ‘…lived experience is crushed, vanquished by what is conceived of. (…) This may explain why affectivity, which, along with the sensory/sensual realm, cannot accede to abstract space.’ – Ibid, p.51 49 F.Duffy, The Changing Workplace, Phaidon Press, London, 1992 50 Lefebvre, 1991, p.53 48

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Topographies of despair As already outlined,51 there is a tradition, among the critics of modernity, of linking the spatial configurations of the city to the changing psychological conditions of the modern individual. As Vidler states:

Thereby alienation itself, which, according to the classical Marxist model, stems from the inherent logic of capitalism, seems now also to be linked to the spatial qualities of the modern city. Hence -

Such vision bears an uncanny resemblance to the world of Josef K.

. A society’s visual unconscious? (Scene 9)

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see chapter 5 Vidler, 2001, p.25 53 Ibid, p.2 52

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7. The womb turns alien

The Uncanny In the novel, K’s workspace acts like a protective womb, far from being alienating, it offers him a sense of security. In the film, however, the portrayal of this space is very different. What does this signify? As Freud had demonstrated, ‘the uncanny arose (…) from the transformation of something that once seemed homely into something decidedly not so, from the heimlich, that is, into the unheimlich.’55 As, with the onset of urbanisation of the modern society, the protective womb of ties of kinship and community gradually dissolve,56 so does the metaphorical womb of the office protecting and comforting Josef K turn into a large alienation-machine. The space that was once perceived as ‘home’ now turns unhomely and becomes alienating to the subject that once found it his natural habitat.57 For K, in the novel, the office presents a safe ground from which he can face challenges, as does the reader of ghost stories set out for adventures out of his cosy domestic setting.58 According to Vidler59, ‘contrast between a secure and homely interior and the fearful invasion of an alien presence’ is essential for the uncanny effect. This encapsulates the beginning of the Trial, when the inspectors enter K’s apartment, waking him up from his bed and thus invading his home as the System does his existence.

Invasion of K’s world by the System turns it into an uncanny place.60 This may also shed some light on the structural logic of The Trial’s narrative. As Vidler explains –

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F. Kafka, The Trial, Wordsworth Editions, Ware, 2008, p.17 Vidler, 1992, p.6 56 ‘Individuals, lost in an isolation from nature, strangers to the place of their birth, without contact with the past, living only in a rapid present, and thrown down like atoms on an immense and levelled plain, are detached from a fatherland that they see nowhere.’ – B. Constant, as quoted in Ibid, p.4 57 ‘What was once walled and intimate, the confirmation of community – one thinks of Russeau’s Geneva – has been rendered strange by the spatial incursions of modernity.’ – Ibid, p.11 58 ‘The typical context for the telling of ghost stories, the apparently homely interior that gradually turns into a vehicle of horror…’ - Ibid, p.36 59 Ibid, p.3 60 ‘Jetntsch attributed the feeling of uncanniness to a fundamental insecurity brought about by a ‘lack of orientation’, a sense of something new, foreign, and hostile invading an old, familiar, customary world.’ – Ibid, p.23 61 Ibid, p.7 55

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And this may also be how the city appears to the modern everyman. According to Hubert Dreyfus,62 the world becomes experienced as ‘not a home’; while Georg Lukacs63 labels ‘transcendental homelessness’ a universal modern condition. The perception of homeliness as something sacred, a qualitative characteristic of subjective space has thus been, along with the traditional conception of the city, shattered.

. K’s home is invaded by the System. (Scene 1)

The Absurd & The Labyrinthine A crucial aspect of Weber’s thesis in Economy and Society is that the excessively rational system, instead of achieving the ideal state,64 will actually, due to its own inherent tendencies produce irrationality. This is very expressive of what happens throughout The Trial. As Camus65 claims: ‘Kafka expresses tragedy by the everyday and the absurd by the logical.’ Similarly, in the filmic portrayal of K’s workplace, the hyper-rational Cartesian framework serves as a good contrast to reinforce the sense of imminent hysteria.

As shown in the previous section, the ideal portrait of the bureaucratic system (its spatial superego) is clear. It is architecturally manifest in the regularity of K’s workplace. However, throughout both the film and novel, the system is not always portrayed as consistent and transparent (whether functionally or spatially). Often in The Trial, the bureaucracy becomes labyrinthine and distorted, akin, like Kafka’s writing style, to the medieval patterns of tangled alleyways of historical Prague – Ville Contemoranie’s arch enemy.

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Ibid, p.8 Ibid, p.7 64 As outlined in chapter 1 65 A. Camus, 1991, p.81 63

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If the office stands for the ‘ideal’ form of bureaucracy painted by Weber, the labyrinthine can be said to represent its actuality. On another reading, thus, this ‘Nietzschean metaphor for modernity’66 can be seen as a mirror image of the complexities of the modern city.67 As stated by Freud:

The labyrinthine then is a device further enhancing K’s alienation and sense of confusion. It is also closely related to the visual themes of film noir, on which the aesthetic of Welles’ Trial is based.

. The archives: Emotional ‘warping’ of the Cartesian space. (Scene 25)

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Vidler, 2001, p.84 (on the notion of labyrinth) see Poe’s ‘“The Man of The Crowd”, in which the narrator (…) deciphered the “labyrinth” of the crowd’ – Ibid 68 Ibid, p.23 67

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8. Lust and Fear

A dark room, naked flesh, manic grin on the flogger’s face, whip flying through the air, clerks screaming, K is terrified.69 A different scene. A close-up view, bodies falling onto a pile of messed-up files, a scent of lust in the air.70

Haptics of Modernity These are the intimate spaces of The Trial - usually constrained and claustrophobic, or an analogous effect is achieved using close-up shots. If, according to the advocates of Modernism, man needs total visual freedom, celebrated by Le Corbusier in the guise of ineffable space71 - then the sense of proximity and touch is what such kind of modernity is missing. As Georg Simmel testifies –

If this sense of touch is repressed by Modernity, it is re-established at these moments in The Trial. In these scenes, K’s private space is being invaded, the (alienating) distance between the character and his surroundings falls apart and he is simply being touched – in all possible meanings of the term. If the factory/office space is seen as - borrowing a term from Nietzsche73 - the Apollonian domain of clarity and logic; this is the repository of the primeval energies of its eternal rival - the Dionysian.

These (not just in terms of visual scale) individualizing spaces stand in sharp contrast to the mechanized realm of the Establishment. They are activated by irrational fears and passions - in here things live, we can feel the energy and the tension. This is what Freud calls the libido, the principle fuelling the ego instinct - the Will to life. According to Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle,74 it is the antagonist of the annihilating death drive.

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Scene 12 Scene 15 71 Vidler, 2001, p.51; For a wonderful depiction of such space (and the alienation of the glass city), see Playtime, dir. J. Tati, 1967 72 from “Sociological Aesthetics”, as quoted in Vidler, 2001, p.58 73 F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Penguin Books, London, 2003 74 Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 2003 70

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. The closet: A (forcedly) haptic experience. (Scene 12)

Concealment and Subversion This is also a very heimlich space, in the ‘hidden’ sense of the German word - the flogging scene takes place in the bank’s junkroom (or closet), which K just happens to stumble upon. This notion of concealment can thus be related to Freud’s psychological concept of repression.75 As Lefebvre points out, ‘A characteristic contradiction of abstract space consists in the fact that, (…) it denies the sensual and the sexual…’76 Conversely then, ‘whatever is inadmissible, be it malefic or forbidden, thus has its own hidden space on the near or the far side of the frontier.’77 In this scene, as well, the repression can be read in a double sense – either on the scale of the individual or the system. Therefore, the realm of the closet78 is doubly subversive – In the first case it acts as a repository of the repressed aspect of K’s (logic-dominated) psyche; in the second it spatially subverts the realm of the visually-oriented abstract space.

Similarly, the love scenes are analogous to a small Marxist revolution, or Lefebvrian/Situationist subversion of the Order through the creation of Moments.79 In these scenes, the abstract space

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meaning subsuming what is unacceptable into the unconscious. Freud, The Ego and The Id, 1961.

Lefebvre, 1991, p.49 77 Ibid, p.36 78 Note the connotations of this word!

79 The Theory of Moments and the Construction of Situations, Internationale Situationniste #4, 1960.

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briefly collapses into a singularity – which could almost be seen as a phenomenological reaffirmation of man’s Place in the universe.80

. The order (momentarily) collapsed. (Scene 15)

The Synthesis Putting these characteristics together – such model graphically corresponds to the nature of the unconscious – a place charged with unbound energy which can at the same time be a Pandora’s box of sleeping demons. On this reading then, in contrast to my original assumption,81 the pressures of K’s id can at times be more liberating than excruciating, even though on the first sight they may not seem so; and in the long run, they provide only a temporary respite from K’s fate – the execution, towards which the labyrinth of his existence inevitably converges.82 If the cosmology of The Trial is a dualistic one – the relentless death drive of the bureaucracy83 seems to be the victor.

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‘to get back in touch’ would be an apt phrase here as outlined in chapter 4 82 And against which K’s logic seems not to be of much help either 83 an association made in chapter 6 81

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9. Conclusion

Essentially, I have provided two different readings of The Trial. It was viewed as a portrayal of an: 1. Internal conflict between the superego and the id, in between which the ego is entrapped. (as outlined in essay’s chapter 4) 2.

External conflict between the normalizing pressures of the Establishment and the subversive elements of the Individual’s psyche. (chapters 6-8)

The second reading is an extension of the first - the subversive tendencies in The Trial stem from the character’s id; and the superego is externalized in the form of a bureaucracy, to whose model it fittingly corresponds. The spatial representation corroborates this model.

In terms of architectural discourse: (1.) The internal conflict corresponds to the psychological anxieties of the modern metropolitan.

(2.) The external conflict corresponds to the material-social conditions of such person.

As I have shown, these two sets of conditions are interconnected and both may be casually linked to the practice of modern urban architecture.

Further inquiry In the end, this essay raises several (rather complex) questions, from the nature of the capitalist Abstract space and its psychological reading to the position of modern subject in the contemporary society. A most pressing question perhaps is – how did the outlined situation develop and to what extent are these findings relevant nowadays? Is the contemporary Josef K still a man of The Crowd?

Are junkspace84 and the Generic City85 a logical continuation of Abstract space or are they different?

How does this alter with the increasing presence of cyberspace? But such questions may constitute a topic for the next work.

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Footnote

What to make of this essay? If it seems structured, it is quite tangled and dense, in homage to Kafka.

Thus, for the best experience, at least two readings are recommended. © Michal Kubis. January 2014. MArch 5. Semester 1. Unit ARC8051. T4T. Word count: 4318.

84 85

R. Koolhaas, Junkspace, October, Vol.100, MIT Press, 2002 R. Koolhaas; Generic City; S,M,L,XL; The Monticelli Press, 1995

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books: W. Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Penguin Books, London, 2008 [kindle edition] E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990 [kindle edition] C. Camic, P. Gorski and D. Trubek, Making Sense and Making Use of Max Weber’s Economy and Society, Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion, Standford University Press, Palo Alto, 2005 A. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage, New York, 1991 [.pdf version] F.Duffy, The Changing Workplace, Phaidon Press, London, 1992 F.Duffy, Work and the City, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2008 S. Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Acheron Press, Penguin Books, London, 2003 [kindle edition] S.Freud, The Ego and The Id, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud – Volume Thirteen, The Hogarth Press, Toronto, 1961 S. Freud, The Uncanny, Penguin Books, London, 2003 [kindle edition] F. Kafka, In the Penal Colony, Penguin Books, London, 2011 [kindle edition] F. Kafka, The Trial, Wordsworth Editions, Ware, 2008 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1991 F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Penguin Books, London, 2003 [kindle edition] A. Vidler, Warped Space, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001 A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny –Essays in the Modern Unhomely, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992 M. Weber, Economy and Society, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992

Papers and articles: J. Adams, Orson Welles's 'The Trial': Film Noir and the Kafkaesque (Critical Essay),West Chester University, 1999.

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A.C.B. de Quiros, Evolution of Workplace Architecture as a Consequence of Technology Development, RMIT University, Melbourne, 2009 R. Koolhaas; Generic City; S,M,L,XL; The Monticelli Press, 1995, pp.1239-1264 R. Koolhaas, Junkspace, October, Vol.100, MIT Press, 2002, pp.175-190 [.pdf version] C.S. Markoe, Alienation through Bureaucratic Proceduralism and the Emergent Will of State, University of California, 2010 L. Stanek; Space as Concrete Abstraction: Hegel, Marx and Modern Urbaism in Henri Lefebvre; Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Henri Lefebvre and Radical Politics; Routlenge, London, 2008, pp.62-79

Internet articles: S.V. Biesen, Orson Welles and ‘40s Film Noir, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.popmatters.com/feature/175397-orson-welles-and-film-noir-style-in-the-1940s/ on 22 November 2013.

M. Brendle; Kafka, Bueraucracy and Anxiety. Retrieved on 10 December 2013 from http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unabashedly-Bookish-The-BN/Kafka-Bureaucracy-andAnxiety/ba-p/540549 J. Butler, The Oppressive Rectanguality of the Fluorescent Light, 2009. Retrieved on 12 January 2014 from http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2009/04/11/mad-men-style S. Chick, 50 Years On: The Trial Revisited, 2012. Retrieved on 28 November 2013 from http://thequietus.com/articles/10132-the-trial-orson-welles-50-years-on F.F. Croce, The Crowd, 2007. Retrieved on 11 January 2013 from http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-crowd/2713 R. Ebert, Playtime, 2004. Retrieved on 6 January 2014 from http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-playtime-1967 R. Ebert, The Apartment, 2001. Retrieved on 6 January 2014 from http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-apartment-1960 A. Grossman, Orson Welles’ ‘The Trial’ Is a Study in Transcendental Sociology, 2013. Retrieved on 22 November 2013 from http://www.popmatters.com/feature/175398-aspects-of-orson-orson-wellesthe-trial-a-study-in-transcendental-so/ R. Lambie, Looking back at A Clockwork Orange, 2011. Retrieved on 2 January 2014 from http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/17503/looking-back-at-a-clockwork-orange J.Raskin, Orson Welles’ Subversive Genius: ‘The Third Man’, Film Noir and the Cold War, 2013.

Retrieved on 20 November 2013 from http://www.popmatters.com/feature/175394-orson-wellessubversive-genius-the-third-man-film-noir-and-the-cold-/

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P. Stapley, Max Weber – Bureaucracy, Introduction to Sociology, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, 2010. Retrieved on 16 January 2014 from http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber12.html A-M. Scholz, ‘Josef K von 1963…’ Orson Welles’ ‘Americanized’ Version of The Trial and the changing functions of the Kafkaesque in Postwar West Germany, 2009. Retrieved on 3 December 2013 from http://ejas.revues.org/7610#tocto1n6 Chapter 4: The Myth of Sisyphus, Rochester Public Schools. Retrieved on 17 December 2013 from https://bbmedia.rochester.k12.mn.us Fordism and Post-Fordism, Willamette University. Retrieved on 25 December 2013 from http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/Fordism_&_Postfordism.html Professionalization, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved on 16 January 2014 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/84999/bureaucracy/257617/Professionalization The Theory of Moments and the Construction of Situations, Internationale Situationniste #4, 1960.

Retrieved on 18 January 2014 from http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/moments.html

Films: À Nous La Liberte, dir. R. Clair, France, Films Sonores Tobis, 1931

Kafka, dir. S. Soderbergh, Miramax Films, 1991 Playtime, dir. J. Tati, France, 1967 The Apartment, dir. B. Wilder, USA, United Artists, 1960 The Crowd, dir. K. Vidor, USA, MGM, 1928 The Third Man, dir. O. Welles, United Kingdom, British Lion Films, 1949 The Trial, dir. O. Welles, France-Italy-Germany, Astor Pictures Corporation, 1962

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APPENDIX 1: MAP OF THE TRIAL (SKETCH)

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APPENDIX 2: EXTENDED REFERNECE TIMELINE (19th century, early): 70 hours working week (1818) Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation (1823) Shelley: Frankenstein (1835) De Tocqueville: Democracy in America (1837) Commercial telegraphs introduced (1842) Gogol: Overcoat (1848) revolutions in Europe (1848) Franz Joseph I. crowned emperor in Austria (1853) Dickens: Bleak House (1853-70) Hausmann rebuilds Paris (1855) Bessemer steel production process (1857) Baudelaire: Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857) Elisha Otis installs elevator with a safety break in a department store (1859) Mill: On Liberty (1860) Arts and Crafts movement develops (1860s-70s) Galton develops the concept of eugenics (1864) Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground (1864) International Workingmen’s Association (or The First International), founded in London (1867) Marx: Das Kapital (1870s) Guild of St George established by Ruskin (1872) Dore: Exercise Yard (1872) World Exhibition in Vienna (1873) birth of mass production of type writers in the US (1873-1879) Long Depression (1885) Liszt: Bagatelle sans tonalité -> a precursor to atonal music (1886) Alternating current electrification (1886) Nietzshce: Beyond Good and Evil (1890 -32) Progressive Era and Efficiency Movement start in the US (1891)Tesla coil invented (1893) Edison’s Iron ore processing plant (1893) First known open plan offices (Home Office Building, National Fire Insurance Co., USA) (1894) Van Marken introduces the term Social engineering (1896) Sullivan: The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1897) Pavlov publishes results of experiments on dogs-> leads to discovery of conditioning (1900-1930) Electrification of factories (1900) Freud: Interpretation of dreams (1901) Freud: The Psychopathology of everyday life (1902) Sakichi Toyoda (founder of Toyota) invents jidoka (automation with a human touch) (1903) Ford motor company founded (1904) electric gearless traction elevator becomes a standard (1906) Wright: Larkin Administration building (1906-1911) Saussure: Course in General Linguistics - foundation of structuralism (1908) Schoenberg starts to experiment with atonal music in Vienna (1909) Marinetti: Futurist Manifesto (1910) Loos: Ornament and Crime (1911) Taylor: The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) Earp: Social Engineer (1913) Russolo: The Art Of Noises (1913) Watson launches the behavioural school of psychology (1913) Ford motor company introduces production line (1914-15) Kafka: The Trial (1916) Franz Joseph I. dies (1917) Freud: Introduction to psychoanalysis (1917) Duchamp: Fountain

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(1917) Revolution in Russia (1918) Austria-Hungarian Empire dissolves (1919) Bauhaus founded in Weimar (1919) Russell: Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919) Freud: The Uncanny (1920) Joyce: Ulyssses (1919) Breton, Soupault: Les Champs Magnétiques -> first automatic book (1920s) The Soviet Union starts to implement Fordism and Taylorism to boost industrial production (1920) Wiene: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1922) Weber: Economy and Society (1922) Kafka: The Castle (1922) Le Corbusier: Ville Contemporaine (1923) Freud: The Ego and the Id (1923) Lukacs: History and Class Consciousness (1924) Leger: Ballet Mecanique (1925) Fitzgerlad: The Great Gatsby. Roaring 20s.

(1925) Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin (1925) Le Corbusier: Plan Voisin (1926) Meyerhold’s production of Gogol’s The Government Inspector - Pavlovian theatre (1926) Kahn: ‘The Man as an Industrial Palace’ (1927) Breton: The Surrealist Manifesto (1927) Ruttmann: Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) Mosolov: Steel - futurist ballet based in a factory (1928) CIAM founded (1928) Batailles: Story of the Eye (1928) Vidor: Crowd (1929) Bunuel, Dali: Un Chien Andalou (1929) Vertov: Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Wall Street Crash (1930) Chenal, Corbusier: Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1930s, early) Dali develops the Paranoiac-critical method (1930s) Swing music develops (1931) term ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ coined - a ‘deliberately over-engineered’ machine (1931) Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye - ‘the machine for living’ (1932) Huxley: Brave New World (1933) Third Reich forms (1934) Gamsci: Americanism and Fordism - coins the term Fordism (1934) Clair: A Nous La liberte (1930s, mid) 40-hour working week introduced (1935) Le Corbusier: Ville Radieuse (1936) Benjamin: The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (1936) Brecht invents Vervremdungseffekt in theatre (alienation effect) (1936) Skinner: The Behaviour of Organisms -> launches behaviourist school (1936) Chaplin: Modern Times (1936) Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) Turing machine invented (1937) the earliest known industrial robot completed (1938) Artaud: Theatre and Its Double - theatre of cruelty (1938) Just-in-time concept born at Toyota (later to replace Fordism) (1938) Sartre: Nausea (1939) Wright: Johnson Wax Headquarters (1939) Fluorescent lights introduced to the public at the NY World Fair (1941) Welles: Citizen Kane (1941) Zuse Z3 - world’s first programmable computing machine (1942) Camus: The Myth Of Sisyphus. The Stranger.

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(1942) Wansee Conference and The Final Solution to the Jewish question (1943) Le Corbusier: Athens Charter (1945) atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) Fordism starts to diffuse throughout Western Europe (1945) onset of late capitalism, white collar service workers outnumbered those who made products (1945-73) Postwar Economic expansion - ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’. The Age of economic miracles.

(1946) ENIAC constructed - first general-purpose computer (1947) Simon: Administrative Behaviour (1947) Lefebvre: Critique of Everyday Life (1947) Le Corbusier: Unité d'Habitation, Marseilles (1947) transistor developed (1947) Cold War begins (1947) first homes in a Levittownsold - neighbourhoods of cheap, standardized and mass produces houses (1948) barcode is born (1948) The phrase ‘Beat Generation’ introduced by Kerouac (1948-75) Toyota Production system develop (1949) Beckett: Waiting for Godot (1949) Orwell: Nineteen-Eighty Four (1949) Welles: The Third Man (1950) Riesman: The Lonely Crowd (1950s) first supermarkets open in the USA - ‘all under one roof’.

(1950s) Burolandschaft office concept. Openconcept schools introduced.

(1955) one car to every 3 Americans (10 in Britain) (1955) Parkinson’s Law – ‘coefficient of inefficiency’ (1955) journalist Fairlie coins the phrase The Establishment (1956) Ginsberg: Howl (1956) Whyte: Organization Man (1956) Milton Friedman’s restatement of the quantity theory of money. Rise of monetarism.

(1956) Hamilton: Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?

(1957) Pinot-Gallizio’s large canvases appear - mechanical reproduction of ‘art’ (1957) Rand: Atlas Shrugged (1958) BankAmericard – The first credit card in the USA (1958) Lego brick invented (1959) over 65.000.000 TVs have sold in the US (1960) Godard: Breathless (1960) Hitchcock: Psycho (1960) Wilder: The Apartment (1960) ‘scientific management’ falls out of favour (1960s) Sol LeWitt’s construction manuals for paintings - outsourcing of labour in art (1961) US FCC Chairman Minnow calls TV ‘a vast wasteland’ (1961) Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) Adorno: Aesthetic Theory (started) (1962) Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1962) Andy Warhol sets up The Factory (1962) Lefebvre: Introduction to Modernity (1962) Welles: The Trial (1960s, mid) Hippie ‘culture’ emerges in the US (1963) Scharoun: Berliner Philharmonik completed (1964) Depreciation laws in the US - encouraged mass construction of malls (1964) The Beatles debut in the US. Rolling Stones release debut album.

(1964/67) Action office furniture developed by Miller - the cubicle is born (1967) Debord: Society of the Spectacle – Situationism arises.

(1967) Tati: Playtime – a great filmic critique of transparent cities (1968) worldwide student protests (1969) Internet is born (1960s, late) ‘Crisis of Fordism becomes apparent (to Marxists)

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(1970) Kurokawa: Nakagin Capsule Tower (1970) Toffler: Future Shock (1970s, early) regulation theory develops in France (1970s) post-fordism develops (1971) Bretton Woods system (of regulation of relations between national economies) collapses (1971-77) Rogers: Centre Pompidou (1972) Pruitt-Igoe exploded. ‘Death of Modernism.’

(1973) Oil crysis. Stock market crash. Stagflation (1970s, mid) sea of cubicles effectively replaces the office landscape (1975) Toyota Production System translated into English (1978) Koolhaas: Delirious New York (1979) Thatcherism takes over Britain (1980) Toffler: Third Wave (1982) Pink Floyd – The Wall (1985) Gilliam: Brazil (1986) Six Sigma process improvement techniques invented by Motorola (1980s, late) Total quality management develops (1988) Zuboff: The Age of the Smart Machine (1990) Womack & Jones: The Machine That Changed The World - makes ‘lean production’ known worldwide (1992) Fukuyama: The End of History and the last man (1995) Auge: Non-Places (1995) Koolhaas: S,M,L,XL 2 (2000) 50 million office workers in the US, occupying an area of 1 billion m ; 10 million in the UK (2001) Koolhaas: Junkspace ...

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