Towards Kaszëbsczi Contiguity

Abstract

In the work by Franz Kafka, as understood by Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari (2016) there is a strong sense of contiguity. Every room that the protagonist of the Trial would be in would never satisfy all the answers that they so desperately sought revealing instead the presence of another room yet to be explored in the future. In this, Deleuze and Guattari narrated a sense of a never-ending process that is continually being unfolded beyond the border of perception and current situation. This sense is representative of the state of Communism at the time Kafka was alive emphasising a sense of anxiety of what is to come - yet never materialising.

The paper here is exploring a situation of [re]claiming place in a sense of [re]asserting perceived control over this becoming, and easing of the anxieties that were associated with the Communist affect. The protagonist here is Mieczysław Różycki – a Polish artist whose specialism was the production of vernacular in style Objet d’art and jewellery typical for the Polish region where he worked; against the Communist directive to conform to repetitiveness of life.

In this vein of resistance, Różycki obtained and refitted a vernacular Kaszëbsczi (from the Northern-Polish cultural region) cottage in the countryside to make a new home for himself and his family. The [re]claiming of this place was deeply subversive in that it sought a more sensitive manifestation of heritage of a region than the Communist government would accept and at the same time it changed the way in which the space could connect with the public at a time when gregariousness was problematic. With this came a much-desired perceived control of what is yet to come. The organisation of the interior, materiality and especially the treatment of the thresholds, and light are what capture the subversive element of Różycki’s [re]claiming of the Deleuzo-Guattarian contiguity.