A Diversion

Deleuze is right. In real life we experience daily the process whereby one idea or concept mesh or fold into another bigger one and which second idea or concept may mesh or fold into a third even bigger one and so on and on until we come to an idea or concept which is co-extensive with all of reality as we know it and perhaps into an even bigger and vaster and more complex but invisible and unknowable reality in which our world is just one tiny dimension. Alternatively, one idea may strike another idea an angle  and its force may impact it so that the second idea will be slightly or substantially transformed depending on the force of the impact and of the encounter. There is a third scenario in which one tiny component of one idea or concept may develop and branch out and grow until it is so big by comparison with the original idea or concept of which that component was originally its component will as a result of such branching out and growth, become or appear by comparison to have formed or become not the mother of that branch but one of the children of that branch.i.e. when the relation of trunk and branch will be reversed, as happens in the case of what was originally a tiny bud along the body of a ginger root growing underground growing  into another huge "arm" of that original original ginger root because in the process of growing and extending itself, that bud or branch has met with more favourable  surrounding environment e.g more nutrients, more water or more regular supply of water or nutrients or better soil such that that original bud or branch is now much stronger and much bigger than its original stem or that "mother" root. A concrete example of one such scenario happening is what happened last night.

I started out reading a book on Deleuze. In a break, my eyes fell upon a book by Camus. An idea flashed across my mind: some of the stuffs that Deleuze was writing about on the relations between one idea and another and on the importance of looking out not for similarities between one idea or concept and another but on their differences and hence on "creativity" of a thinker seem to have a remarkable "resonance" with what Camus was doing. Camus wrote shortly after the second world war when France was ready for change. Deleuze was writing in the mid-1960s, when France has had enough of right wing Gaulism and Deleuze came out in support of the Events of May 1968 in the same way that Camus came out  in support of the independence of Algeria, quite against mainstream French opinion then. Both wrote about how the internal development of one idea pushed to its limit may generate new ideas which may reverse or at least modify the direction in which the original idea was developing and how even embedded within the body of the "new" idea, one may still find "traces" or "shadows" of certain components of the the old idea or concept. That "new" idea prompted me to pick up a book by Camus upon which my eyes fell entirely by random chance. I picked up that book and flipped through it. That changed entirely the direction on which my thoughts were developing yesterday morning. I began reading Camus instead of Deleuze and in no time, I was writing a another blog not on Deleuze but on some of Camus's ideas! And this has continued today!

Camus says that the whole art of Kafka consists in forcing the reader to re-read and that his endings or more precisely, his absence of endings suggest explanations which are not revealed in clear language and which requires that the story be re-read from another point of view and that sometimes it may require two readings. But I would say that they require more than just two readings. Many of Kafka's stories may be read in at least five ways:
1: on the surface, literally, when we just take him at his word "as if" it were all that the author "meant" to say;
2. as Kafka's "allegory" (some say "parable") for describing man's existential condition, how he finds himself in a world he hasn't chosen to be in, a world he doesn't know or understands but which nonetheless imposes certain duties and obligations upon him and how his "heroes", normally, little people just living "ordinary" lives, find themselves in dilemmas which they rationally, doggedly, quietly and calmly but with underlying anxiety try to fathom but never quite succeeding.
3. as Kafka's allegory for describing contemporary man's struggle against secular government authorities which purport to make certain demands of him without explanations, without giving him sufficient clues on what exactly it is that they want and how he can fulfill them and how they would do their best and use all kinds of delaying tactics to avoid having to confront him in person
4. as Kafka's allegory of his personal predicament as an "outsider" in a land which although his home is never quite a home, Kafka' being a Jew in Czechoslavkia, which itself was only an outsider to the central government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Vienna, speaking and writing in a language which is not really his own, his own being Yiddish or how he is an outsider in his own home, a loner who faced a stern father who is supposed to love him but who never quite understood him and never did but from whom he could not be separated because they were linked by blood and how he could never find sufficient courage to marry Felice Bauer, the girl with whom he corresponded for a number of years and whom he obviously loved and thus remained forever estranged from her and perhaps even as an allegory of how one part of himself was an outsider to another part of himself, how his reason instead of being a partner of his emotion, did nothing but sabotaged his emotional life by imaging all kinds of fearful consequence if he were fully and unreservedly to throw himself into a firm commitment and how even  the thing with which he had the most intimate relationships, viz. his writings,which he described as his "nightly scribblings" estranged him from himself by replicating and reminding him of how alienated he was from everything and which were in a sense his "double" in the world of personal isolation and loneliness he found
5. as a religious or spiritual allegory in which man suffers from a congenital guilt in respect of a crime the true nature of which he never succeeds in finding out, and for which he is accused, undergoes a trial, from a book of law used by a judge on which there is nothing but some doodles, a guilt from which he could never completely extricate himself, a guilt whose origins he could never fathom and for which he is condemned to suffer all kinds of most excruciating suffering, as in the Trial, the Castle and the Penal Colony( in which there is a machine which inscribes the punishment the prisoner is to suffer upon his skin, word by word until he dies from such pain), all in the calmest, most civilized ways for which no one expresses any surprises at all!

Camus says that Kafka uses his novels as symbols which is always general for which there is no word for word translation and that however precise its translation, the artist can restore to it only its movement but it is hard to speak of a symbol in a tale the most obvious quality of which is its "naturalness". A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing, says Camus. Therefore the proper way to approach the drama of Kafka's novel is to approach it through its externals and its form.

In the above, we find a chain illustrating the kind of proliferation of concepts that Deleuze is talking about viz.  reading Deleuze~ a certain similarity of point of view on one matter (one of the components on the global Deleuze) viz. character (a component of the personality of each), branching off by chance to reading Camus (another author) and by a further chance (a component within the first chance ) ~ one particular essay in a particular book (the essay being "folded" into the larger context of the book ) talking about a third author ( a third and completely new concept joined to the second through a common interest (absurdity) ~leading to a further reading by one of its reader ( viz. me) and this reader's opinion on one component of what the second author is talking about. The chain of connections  shows the proliferation of concepts from one of their components and yet joining all is their common plane (the problems of humanity). Thus concepts may be linked by similarity, chance to further concepts but all folded in the larger plane of common concern of humanity. A concrete illustration of Deleuze's philosophy in action!