Becoming-Expressionist-animal: Deleuze and Guattari’s Kafka and the Debate Over Expressionism

Abstract: The Expressionist and Primitivist movements are a contentious center point in the argument between those who favor realist , useful art and those who value modernist art. Some berate Expressionists for their inability to take a political stand while others argue that their art finds a deeper truth than realist works ever could. While the two camps are thoroughly entrenched, a recent work allows for a new approach. Deleuze and Guattari, in their work on Kafka, have illuminated a rhetorical escape from the enclosed system and have, in doing so, given us a new way to perceive Expressionism and primitivism in art movements. Rather than viewing the movements from a position on the axis between realism and modernism, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, shows us how we can view them as attempts to escape the machinations of society.

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