Kafka, Foucault, and Writing as Resistance

Nicholas Dungey has published Franz Kafka and Michele Foucault: Writing as Resistance as a Western Political Science Association 2010 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

One of the most pressing challenges to Foucault's notion of the self and disciplinary power concerns the issue of resistance. If, as Foucault argues, the self is wholly constituted by disciplinary power and practices, then what possibility exists for resistance to such power and practices? While this is a difficult challenge, Foucault insists that resistance is part and parcel with the happening of disciplinary power. In order to illuminate Foucault's observations about resistance I turn to Kafka' letters and diaries. I contend that Kafka wrote as a way of resisting the influence of disciplinary power and practices. Kafka wrote in order to do battle with the forces he found himself constituted by, and in the process, redefine the field of battle, and re-describe the terms and discourse in which the battle was fought. Kafka wrote, and struggled to write, as a way of resisting the domination of disciplinary power operating on him. I contend that Kafka might have been aware, like Foucault, that there was no final victory, no heroic escape or triumph from the battle. Therefore, Kafka wrote not to overcome the battle, but rather as the only legitimate response to the forces of 'isciplinary (sic) power. Writing was Kafka's way of struggling valiantly.

The full text is not available on SSRN.

The Trial

From the New York Times, an account of the legal battle over Franz Kafka literary legacy. The parties: the National Library of Israel and the heirs of Max Brod, who handled Mr. Kafka's estate.

Reza Banakar, University of Westminster School of Law, has published "In Search of Heimat: A Note on Franz Kafka’s Concept of Law," in volume 22 of Law and Literature (Summer 2010). Here is the abstract.

Are Franz Kafka’s descriptions of law and legality a figment of his imagination or do they go beyond his obsessive probing of his neurosis, reflecting issues which also engaged the social and legal theorists of the time? Does Kafka’s conception of law offer anything new in respect to law, justice and bureaucracy, which was not explored by his contemporaries or by later legal scholars? This paper uses Kafka’s office writings as a starting point for re-examining the images of law, bureaucracy, hierarchy and authority in his fiction; images which are traditionally treated as metaphors for things other than law. It will argue that the legal images in Kafka’s fiction are worthy of examination, not only because of their bewildering, enigmatic, bizarre, profane and alienating effects, or because of the deeper theological or existential meaning they suggest, but also as a particular concept of law and legality which operates paradoxically as an integral part of the human condition under modernity. To explore this point Kafka’s conception of law is placed in the context of his overall writing as a search for Heimat which takes us beyond the instrumental understanding of law advocated by various schools of legal positivism and allows us to grasp law as a form of experience.

Download from SSRN at the link.

Anti-Semitism and Religion in Kafka

Arnold Heidsieck, University of Southern California, has published "On Judaism, Christianity, Anti-Semitism in Kafka's the Castle, His Letters and Diaries." Here is the abstract.

In his writings Kafka scrutinized, encouraged by his friend Max Brod, the early 20th-century German-speaking disputes on the ancient Jewish origins of Christianity and attempted an explication of the Christian-Germanic ideology of anti-Semitism.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Kafka's POV

Arnold Heidsieck, University of Southern California, has published "Kafka's Narrative Innovation and Ethical Intuitions." Here is the abstract.

In his fictions Kafka develops an innovative narrative POV (uni-polar 'self-narration') and a penetrating (near-psychoanalytic) scrutiny of motives. Additionally, throughout his fictions and his non-fiction he works out a contextually rich individualist ethics.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Franz Kafka's Last Wishes and the Kafka Myths

Professor Lior Strahilevitz (U. Chicago Law School) has an interesting post about Franz Kafka's papers. The famous story about Kafka's papers is that Kafka asked his friend, Max Brod, to burn them after his death. Although Kafka had published a few works during his lifetime, a great many stories, parables, letters, and diary entries were unpublished, as were Kafka's two great book masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle. Brod refused to burn them. Instead, he published them, and Kafka would go on to achieve enormous posthumous fame as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Should Brod have carried out Kafka's wishes? Lior argues yes:

I have written, and continue to believe, that Brod should have destroyed Kafka’s unpublished works, as per Kafka’s instructions, notwithstanding the immense literary value of the work. Kafka had legitimate privacy and artistic integrity interests in the works that should have been respected, and as their creator he was in the best position to decide upon their fate.

Controversies over the Kafka papers have recently reemerged. The New York Times describes a new issue over Kafka's papers:

When Mr. Brod fled to Tel Aviv from Prague on the last train out in 1939 as the Nazis rolled in, he had with him a suitcase full of Kafka’s documents.

Here, he took up with his secretary, and when he died in 1968, he bequeathed to her the remaining Kafka papers, as well as his own from a rich cultural career. For nearly 40 years, the secretary, Esther Hoffe, held the world of Kafka scholarship on tenterhooks, keeping the documents in her ground-floor apartment on Spinoza Street, some of them piled high on her desk (it was originally Mr. Brod’s), where she typed all day and took her meals.

The last time a scholar was permitted into the apartment was in the 1980s. Later, Ms. Hoffe sold the manuscript for “The Trial” for $2 million. No one knows what remains.

Since her death last year at age 101, her 74-year-old daughter, Hava, has indicated that a decision about the coveted papers will be made in the coming months. While most of the Kafka estate is already in archives in the Czech Republic, Britain and Germany, some may still be inside the scuffed front door of the Hoffe apartment.

Lior's article, The Right to Destroy, 114 Yale L.J. 781 (2005) (SSRN version here, final published version here) argues:

I submit that the K papers and manuscripts should be destroyed, on the basis of any of four rationales. . . .

First . . . A society that does not allow authors to have their draft works destroyed posthumously could have
less literary product than a society that requires the preservation of all literary works not destroyed during the author’s life. Protecting authors’ rights to destroy should encourage high-risk, high-reward projects, and might prevent writers from worrying that they should not commit words to paper unless they have complete visions of the narrative structures for their work. . . .

Second, we might accept an economic rationale. . . . K has an economic interest (via his concern for the welfare of his beneficiaries) in assuring that the value of his published works is not diminished by the conceivably inferior quality of the unpublished works.

Third and relatedly, . . . By destroying his unfinished works, K may wish to send a message to the public that he is not the type of artist who will tolerate, let alone publish, inferior works. . . .

Finally, . . . . If a court decides to bar Brod from destroying K’s unpublished works, it is forcing the departed K to speak when he would have preferred to remain silent.

I don't want to take on Lior's arguments in this post, as I find myself greatly torn over the issue. Respecting the privacy and final wishes of the author is a very important value, but there is also enormous social benefit from society's having an author's papers. Imagine if Kafka's wishes had been granted. Nobody would know of The Trial or The Castle, two of the greatest works of literature ever penned. Maybe there should be a special exception for Kafka since his works are so great. . . .

But there's another interesting issue in Kafka's request to Brod. Lior explicitly states that he is assuming, for the sake of his analysis, that Kafka's instructions to Brod were "unambiguous." But Kafka's instructions were, in fact, not so clear. In a recent book, Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life (2008), James Hawes attempts to deflate many myths about Kafka. Kafka wrote two "wills" to Brod. In his writing desk, Kafka left the following instruction:

Dearest Max, my last wish: Everything that I leave behind in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters of my own and from others, drawing, etc. (whether in my bookcase, clothes cupboard, writing desk at home or at the office, or in any other place anything may have gotten and you find it) should be burned, completely and unread, as should everything written or drawn in your possession or in the possession of others whom you should ask, in my name, to do likewise. People who do not want to hand over letters to you should at least be made to promise that they themselves will burn them. Yours, Franz Kafka.

Kafka wrote Max another letter shortly before his death, listing his published works and saying that "only the following books count" but that :everything that exists in the way of my writings (publications in journals, manuscripts and letters) is without exception inasmuch as it's possible to get hold of it . . . . all this, without exception, is to be burned and you are asked to do this as quickly as possible by me, Franz."

Hawkes contends, and I agree, that Kafka "didn't mean a word of it." Hawes writes:

Kafka was a lawyer. He knew very well what a binding legal document looked like and that neither of these supposed wills was remotely a real one. Brod claims that he'd even told Kafka flat out, at the time of his first will, that he wouldn't carry out the instructions.

Brod was Kafka's best friend and greatest fan. Brod had helped to establish Kafka's reputation as an author, and it was ironic to ask him to destroy the works. Kafka had shown Brod The Trial and back in 1919, Brod even joked with Kafka that Brod would finish it when Kafka's publisher was demanding novels instead of stories from Kafka.

Kafka was a master of irony. His request to Brod, understood in the context of his work, diaries, and letters (much of which, even more ironically, were subject to his request to burn), is typical Kafka. He was asking the man whom he knew never would burn his papers to do so. He could have asked others to carry out his bidding, but he chose Brod. As in all his works, Kafka raises complex issues of interpretation.

The Hawes book is an interesting read, as it attempts to debunk many myths about Kafka. Among the myths are that Kafka was unknown in his lifetime, that he lived a lonely life, and that he was poor. In fact, Hawes points out that Kafka was well-received in literary circles. Kafka had an active social life. Kafka did have dysfunctional relationships with women, a phenomenon Hawes attributes to Kafka's deep ambivalence about being married and raising a family (which Kafka was afraid would take away time from his writing). Kafka made a very good living and was successful at his job. Hawes also notes that although many view Kafka's living at home for most of his adult life demonstrated that he was a failure, this was in fact the norm for young unmarried professionals. People envision Kafka as a tiny gaunt figure, but he was for most of his life in good shape and was quite tall -- about 6 feet tall, which was much taller than average at the time.

Hawes does go a bit overboard at times, contending that Kafka's Jewishness had little influence in his work. In fact, Kafka's works are suffused with countless tropes, images, and references to Judaism. Kafka wasn't a particularly religious man, but he was fascinated by Judaism and studied it extensively. Hawes also makes much of Kafka's porn collection, using it as a way to deflate critics whom Hawes think put Kafka on too much of a pedestal. The porn consisted mainly of illustrations from a journal called The Amethyst, which seems to have been a literary journal that published "edgy fiction" and erotica. The illustrations, some of which Hawes reproduces in his book, are a little weird, but seem much more arty than pornographic. Hawes seems to be a bit too obsessed in attacking his conception of the Kafka critic who views Kafka as an asexual individual, a pure soul devoted solely to abstract ideas. Such critics do exist, but much commentary about Kafka does not view him in this caricatured manner. Nevertheless, despite Hawes' tendency to overclaim, his book is very entertaining and illuminating about Kafka. Too bad it is marred by Hawes' rather obnoxious tone, as the one-and-only myth-slayer designed to bring Kafka back to earth.

Cross-posted at Concurring Opinions