Dennis Biba

Thoughts are free, who can guess them? A question that the Germans have been asking themselves in the well-known folk song (Die Gedanken sind frei) since the 18th century, and a question they also have some experience with. In the 20th century, the age of great ideologies, this question became more relevant than ever. The novel Kallocain, however, is swedish and, as clear as the references to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are, can be read as a timeless commentary on authoritarianism itself. Written exactly halfway between the two influential dystopias Brave New World and 1984, Kallocain convinces less with a complex world design than with a single radical idea, the ‘novum’, to use a central term from science fiction research. Kallocain is a thesis novel, like many works of science fiction, and precisely because it doesn’t have to concern itself with the question of what THE future will look like – a rather boring question for literature anyway – it can concentrate entirely on a single aspect.

In the 21st century, two superpowers, the world state and the universal state, wrestle with each other in the eternal contradiction of wanting to be the only state on earth on the one hand and, on the other, to be stabilised ideologically by mutual hostility, because every great ideology needs a counter-ideology from which it can distinguish itself. In the middle of it all is the chemist Leo Kall, a loyal supporter of the world state, a conformist beyond compare, who has made an unheard-of invention: a truth serum that elicits every anti-state thought from the test subjects. There have been many authoritarian regimes in history and each has endeavoured to exert control over the actions of its citizens. In the consistent intensification of these control fantasies, however, the thought itself becomes an action, not only in the sense that it precedes actions that jeopardise the state, but also in its very innocent existence. The authoritarian system thus always strives to control an action that is often subconscious, involuntary, reflexive and therefore beyond the control of the acting person. Orwell created this possibility in 1984 by having children denounce their parents for talking in their sleep. Boye has found a more consistent metaphor. Unlike the authoritarian systems of earlier eras, which were ideologically underpinned but straightforward violent, the regimes of the 20th century – the Soviet Union, the Third Reich and later the USA and China – were based on ideologies that left no room for doubt or criticism. The idea of resistance became a crime in its own right.

It would therefore be a mistake to link Kallocain completely to a specific historical system, be it Stalinism in the Soviet Union or National Socialism in Germany. Especially in its ambiguity, the novel loses none of its relevance in the 21st century, because it demonstrates on both a large and small scale how authoritarian systems function: on the one hand, the desire for the complete annihilation of all dissenting opinions and, on the other, the need for an enemy image both internally and externally. Leo Kall is ultimately also confronted with this contradiction. Convinced that he is cleansing the world state of corrosive thoughts, he soon realises that no one is free of these thoughts, not even himself. In the end, it no longer matters which of the only two states he works for. While the functionary completely renounces critical thinking for large parts of the plot, the reader is forced to do double the work.

For the lesbian author, who also underwent in-depth psychoanalysis – the text is well suited for psychoanalytic readings – the secrecy (and uncanniness) of the subconscious was an existential matter. Although female homosexuality was not explicitly punishable in Sweden in the 1930s, it was still considered a mental disorder. Without wishing to read the text as more biographical than necessary, the novel, which is certainly not a decidedly feminist one, is thus given an additional layer of meaning. After all, the great authoritarian systems were also patriarchal and still are (which, conversely, does not mean that matriarchal systems would be therefore anti-authoritarian). Karin Boye took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills just one year after the publication of Kallocain. Thankfully, at least her texts have been preserved for posterity and are perhaps more important than ever in the age of global surveillance. And so it’ll always be: Thoughts are free!

Karin Maria Boye (1940): Kallocain [Novel]. Sweden.