Borges/Kafka: great writers create their own precursors
example · Borges ·
retold in 4 talks
Borges observed that Kafka retroactively constitutes his precursors (Poe, Blake, Dostoevsky): you need Kafka to see the Kafkaesque dimension in them. Žižek uses this as evidence for the ontological openness of the past.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“A truly great writer creates retroactively his forerunners.”
“A truly great author creates his or her precursors.”
“Each writer creates his precursors. His works modifies our conception of the past as it will modify the future.”1:07:23 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 3pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:55:54
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Édouard Balladur3Nicholas Fearn2Henri Bergson2Damásio Pires Pimentel1Christiane Vulpius1Marat (Jean-Paul Marat)1Vincent van Gogh1Karen Barad1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Borges observed that Kafka retroactively constitutes his precursors (Poe, Blake, Dostoevsky): you need Kafka to see the Kafkaesque dimension in them. Žižek uses this as evidence for the ontological openness of the past., illustrating retroactive causality,ontological openness of reality,plagiarizing from the future
Borges’ claim that great artists like Kafka do not just have predecessors, but create them; Kafka retroactively puts the possibility of himself into Dostoevsky and Poe., illustrating totalizing,pure past
1:07:23 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 3pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:55:54
Borges’ idea that Kafka creates his own precursors: Kafka’s idiosyncrasy is present in earlier writers, but only becomes perceptible because Kafka wrote. Each writer modifies our conception of the past., illustrating pure past,retroactivity
Borges argued that Kafka retroactively created his forerunners (Dostoevsky, Poe, Blake): we can only identify those precursors once Kafka exists. This illustrates Hegel's theory of totality as retroactively rewritten history., illustrating retroactive necessity,Hegelian totality,history as open and retroactively constituted