After all, the main exertion of power in modernity is not tied to the actual detainment of a subject or some exemplary punishment, but is based on self- discipline: Thus, rather than regarding the peculiar subjectivity of Joseph K. It is a paradox that a novel that abounds in references to court proceedings, the workings of the law, and the development of a trial actually does not seem to be concerned with a power that is legally coded. Indeed, the kind of power that concerns K. The lack of such official measures as accusation, trial, and detainment not only indicate that subjects in modern society are always already under arrest hence, it is upon awakening that K.
Indeed, of all the possible directions K. Thus, in The Trial any reference to an official legal framework of power soon dissolves into nothingness: And even when he discovers the book used by the court officials to judge him during the cross-examination, it appears to be nothing more than a porno book 76 — Upon his arrest, K.
Similarly, representatives of the court and this is, it seems, everybody that K. Jane Bennett rightly notes: This is not to say that Kafka obscures the model of power that underlies his work. Indeed, the painter gives K. The first option, definite acquittal [wirkliche Freispruch], is simply impos- sible; no-one has ever been fully released from the hold of the court cf. Thus freedom can never be more than temporary: As such, it aims to obstruct the court proceedings and to postpone judgment as long as possible.
Interestingly, the concepts introduced by Titorelli are remarkably similar to the models of power described above. Indeed, whereas in disciplinary society, one is apparently free but is, in fact, going from one incarceration or: Kafka, who had already placed himself at the pivotal point between two types of social formation, described the most fearsome of juridical forms. The apparent acquittal of the disciplinary societies between two incarcerations ; and the limitless postponements of the societies of control in continuous variation […] Deleuze, Postscript 5.
Interestingly, Kafka tends to show a preference for the model of indefinite postponement. It delineates at the same time a model of reading, an architectural model, and a mode of subjectivity. Two models of space The development from disciplinary society to a society of global control testifies to a shift in the exercise of power, but must also be read as the transition of one spatial model to another. Whereas the enclosed environment pertains to the former, an unbounded and transmuting space characterizes the latter. The old monetary mole is the animal of the spaces of enclosure, but the serpent is that of the societies of control.
We have passed from one animal to the other, from the mole to the serpent, in the system under which we live, but also in our manner of living and in our relations with others Deleuze, Postscript 5. Refusal to interact with the outside is also manifest in the stale air and unbearable heat that is present whenever K. A telling example of this is the use of windows; as Hochreiter writes: But readers of Kafka are equally acquainted with a sense of disorientation caused by un- suspected doors, long staircases, and labyrinthine corridors that traverse rooms and connect faraway places.
Deleuze and Guattari have analysed this architectural opposition in their influential study Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature [] in terms of an astronomical model of space and a terrestrial one. Exemplary in this regard is The Great Wall of China, where the construction can never be completed since it is only being built in fragments, between which gaps persist. The structure of a peripheral ring implies a centre around which it revolves: But the model equally pertains to The Trial where K. As Deleuze and Guattari indicate: It is an astronomical construction.
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It is the formula for ostensible acquittal in The Trial 72, my emphasis, JB. The Panopticon Such an astronomical construction reminds one of a panoptical architecture in which centre and periphery share a similar logic. Bystanders are indeed a recurring feature of K. Upon his arrest, for example, an old woman observes him from a window across from his apartment. We also meet bystanders when K. Rather, it is the internalization of a gaze in K. Incomparable differences are left yawning down below: Rather than an astronomical architecture, such a tendency to- wards limitlessness, immanence, and contiguity is evinced in a terrestrial model of space.
Likewise, spatial features are seldom fixed: Kafka is going from spaces of enclosure to spaces of contiguity; space now follows the shifting coils of the serpent rather than the burrows of a mole.
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Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point Deleuze, Postscript 4. Such condensation is evident when the light of a candle can barely reach the opposite wall or when the upper floor is not spacious enough to accommodate a normal person unless he bends his head and supports it with a cushion against the ceiling.
Yet, dimensions may equally enlarge beyond human proportions, as K. What is regarded as a limited space and outlying parts of the city soon appears to be interconnected. Rather than cancelling out the function of the panopticon, the indef- initeness of space reinforces it. This is true of K. It is a paradox that while K. More surprisingly still, they are almost always already informed of those issues that K.
But the logic of surveillance also pertains to the spatial model of contiguity in a more direct sense. After all, when spaces are interconnected they invariably open up towards the court. This holds for the scene in which K. Likewise, spatial deformations and the logic of the panopticon reinforce each other. Opening up space typically involves surveil- lance. If space up is also space denied, as Karl suggests, then it is because it functions as a point of transmutation.
Interestingly, such transmutations are also signaled by recurring thresholds. One of these is obviously the stairs since these mark the transition from lower space to upper space. But of importance are also doors and doorsteps and objects such as the table and the bed see Hochreiter, Raum 75, ; Ellison, Proust and Kafka As recent critical theory em- phasizes, individuals are caught up in a ceaseless process of subject-formation in a society of global control. Thus, as power becomes ever more anonymous, fleeting and intangible, so the subjectivities generated are characterized by a limitless formation.
One never leaves the school, the army, or the family. As Jane Bennett avers: An excess of explanation: Characters divulge and confess, interpret and recount, endlessly elaborating the context of events. Such a structure of signification encourages a reading that lacks narrative closure. In line with the nature of disciplinary power, Bennett relates this lack of closure to K. Furthermore, she indicates that K. It is especially during the history of the Roman Church that confessional techniques have secured a firm hold from the Middle Ages onward.
A radical- ization of these methodical procedures of self-scrutiny is shown throughout the history of Catholicism that has culminated in the doctrine of Protestantism. Subsequently, confession spreads from the church and justice to the entire field of human sciences and the realm of everyday life. Though confession presupposes an interlocutor and an unequal balance of power and knowledge for instance between patient and doctor, repentant sinner and priest , in modern disciplinary society the subject has become his own inter- locutor in a process of never-ending scrutiny.
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Ulf Abraham, for example, characterizes K. However, even if the arrest recalls a staging Abraham, Rechtspruch — an actual judicial procedure remains as ab- sent as procedures of inquisition and interrogation. This is not to say that interrogation plays no part in the novel, but rather that K. But the predominance of K. At the beginning of the novel the stage is indeed set for a thorough intervention by the law in K. Yet in spite of all of this, the gentlemen assure K.
Apart from that, they pay little attention to him: Interestingly, in a passage that the author later deleted from the text, K.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Likewise, the first cross-examina- tion, a similarly improvised scene, yields no interrogation of the accused. As if to underscore this once more, the regular examinations that were announced to K. Such an emphasis on the thought world of the con- fessional hero is represented by means of narrative devices that seemingly erase the narrator from the text. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Dispatched from the UK in 2 business days When will my order arrive?
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Other books in this series. Die Verwandlung Franz Kafka. Der Prozess Franz Kafka. Das Schloss Franz Kafka.