This contribution investigates the intimate relation and the tension between legal and literary procedures of personification and subjectivation. In order to do so, the contribution turns to Kafka’s The Trial and examines the proximity of the juridical procedure depicted in the novel, intending to establish Josef K. as a subject, to the narrative procedures of the novel itself that aims at bringing forth an accountable protagonist. The intimate relation of the legal procedures described in the novel and the narrative ones (...) of the novel itself is rooted in a shared historical heritage that impacts both. I argue that the fundamental configuration of advocacy in the classical rhetorical procedure: speaking for someone, against someone, in front of an other, lies at the basis of both legal and literary procedures. Against this common rhetorical background I investigate developments in legal procedures and the formation of the modern novel in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Both developments occlude the rhetorical mechanisms of speaking-for and speaking against and turn the rhetorical procedures of personification into mechanisms of subjectivation. Kafka’s Proceß reflects these developments, yet does not affirm this transformation and ultimately does not result in a guilty subject and a ‘believable’ character. Rather, the novel embodies a gesture of resistance against certain modes of subjectivation that seem to be prevalent both in modern law and in the novel of formation. (shrink)

This paper first outlines the key traits of some critiques of Agamben’s theory of the subject. What they have in common is an emphasis on the limitations of his conception of political agency, which is based on the one hand on an apathetic and passive figure such as the Muselmann, and on the other, on Bartleby, the Scrivener, who epitomises Agamben’s notion of potentiality. Following this short review I then focus on Agamben’s recent article “K.,” in which he compares and (...) contrasts the two Kafkian figures of K. from The Trial and The Castle in the context of Roman law. Considering Benjamin’s distinction between a virtual and real state of exception, Josef K. and land surveyor K. adopt two different positions with regard to the form of law on which the structure of sovereignty is based. Josef K. represents bare life, which persists along the internal boundary that is constitutive of the form of law, while land surveyor K. is the subject that manages to erase this internal boundary and, thus, represents the only Agambenian figure that can effectively suspend and abolish the form of law. (shrink)

Though it may sound awkward to ask whether the political sovereign is happy or unhappy, the question is relevant to political theory, especially within a political theological perspective. Because man was created in the image of God, human happiness needs to be a reflection of divine beatitude, and as divine sovereignty is, at least analogically, related to political sovereignty, the conceptual coherence is secured. The main argument is, however, that the analogy does not hold. I shall show how St Thomas (...) Aquinas’s short treatment of God’s beatitude may mislead us about power, fame, riches, and dignity being essential to happiness, based on an analysis of Franz Kafka’s major novel, The Castle, and a few other writings by him. I shall argue that our tradition of political thinking and behavior remains ambivalent on this issue. The political sovereign is born out of our unhappy condition, yet its power, fame, riches, and glory suggests to us that it has appropriated our happiness. But for this very reason it cannot be happy, and it therefore suggests a false analogy between the divine and the political sovereign. It is fundamentally at variance with our happiness, which incites us to abandon, reject, and eventually, kill it. (shrink)

I argue that Kafka's writings express the idea that our sense of freedom is deceptive. It is deceptive because we cannot discern any proper purpose or destination that would allow us to make truly meaningful choices. Kafka's thought here relates to the existentialist view of Kierkegaard, but it radicalizes that view by depriving it of its teleological dimension.