Agamben Reading Kafka: The Animal Way to Paradise
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25180/lj.v26i2.367Keywords:
Franz Kafka, Giorgio AgambenAbstract
The aim of this paper is to revisit the theme of paradise and animality in the work of Kafka, whilst at the same time elucidate Agamben's complex understanding of these notions with the help of the literary imagery of Kafka. In a world where many find themselves crushed by the anthropological machine, Agamben outlines an intuition Kafka had about animals, that can help humans to reconcile with their animal nature, and let them guide us back to paradise. If animals have never left paradise, and the human realm is not substantially different for the animal realm, then like the animals we have never truly left paradise but only think we did. It is only in trying to uphold a higher, human sphere, through self-subjection and exclusion, that we leave the paradisical realm. Kafka's creatures show us the ridiculousness of these divisions between human and animals.
Downloads
References
Abbott, Mathew. 2008. "The Creature Before the Law: Notes on Walter Benja-min's Critique of Violence ." Colloquy Text Theory Critique 16: 80–96.
Abbott, Mathew. 2011. "The Animal for Which Animality Is an Issue: Nietzsche, Agamben, and the Anthropological Machine." Angelaki – Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 16 (4): 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2011.641347.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Idea of Prose. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1999a. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Meridi-an: Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam0210/99039449.html.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1999b. The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1999c. The Man without Content. Stanford: Stanford Universi-ty Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford: Stanford Univer-sity Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2008. "K." In The Work of Giorgio Agamben : Law, Literature, Life. Edited by Nicholas Heron, Justin Clemens, and Alex Murray, 66–81. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2018. Pulcinella, or, Entertainment for Kids in Four Scenes. Edited by Kevin Attell. London: Seagull Books.
Benjamin, Walter. 1996. Selected writings. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Benjamin, Walter, and Gershom Scholem. 1992. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940. Harvard, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Camus, Albert. 1962. "Hope and the Absurd in the World of Franz Kafka." In Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays. 147-156. Edited by R D Gray. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
De La Durantaye, Leland. 2013. "Animals, Humans and Hope. And Interview with Giorgio Agamben." Bidoun, Spring, 57–61.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1986. Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature. Min-neapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.
Fitzpatrick, Peter. 2015. "Political Agonism and the (Im)Possibility of Law: Kaf-ka's Solution." In L'epoca Dei Populismi: Diritti e Conflitti. Edited by F. Ciaramelli and F.G. Menga, 97–116. Milan: Mimesis Edizioni.
Kafka, Franz. 1954. Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings. Edited by Ernst Kaiser & Eithne Wilkins. New York: Schocken Books.
Kafka, Franz. 1983. The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken Books.
Kafka, Franz. 2007. Selected Stories. Edited by Stanley Corngold. New York: W.W. Norton.
Kraft, Werner. 1972. Franz Kafka. Durchdringung und Geheimnis. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Rehberg, Peter. 2007. Lachen Lesen. Zur Komik der Moderne bei Kafka. Bielefeld: Verlag.
Robertson, Ritchie. 2004. Kafka: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.
Santer, Eric L. 2006. On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press
Sontag, Susan. 1967. Against Interpretation. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Sternstein, Malynne. 2001. "Laughter, Gesture, and Flesh: Kafka's 'In the Penal Colony.'" Modernism / Modernity 8 (2): 315–23.
Wasserman, Martin. 2001. "Kafka's 'The New Attorney': A Therapeutic Poem Of-fering a Jewish Way to Face Death." Cithara 31 (1): 61–74.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Labyrinth
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
After acceptation of the paper, the author has to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement granting to Labyrinth and Axia Academic Publishers the exclusive copyrights for the online and printed editions, and to deal with reprint requests from third parties. On special occasions, articles and studies published in Labyrinth may be republished in textbooks or collective works of Axia Academic Publishers as well as translated and published in other languages. By submitting a paper to Labyrinth, you implicitely agree with these conditions.
