Logic of the Absurd: Reading Kafka in a Kafkaesque World

Logic of the Absurd

Reading Kafka in a Kafkaesque World

Muhammad Ali NasirUniversity of Karachi, Pakistan

AbstrAct

If the present world is defined as Kafkaesque, what better way have we to access the Kafkaesque than through Kafka? A criti-cal engagement with Kafka’s works may help us comprehend the logic of the absurd operative in the contemporary lifeworld. The article largely relies on Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle—with cursory references to his other works—to analyze the workings of the ultra-efficient hyper-rationalities governing the present mode of governance. By subjecting comfortable constants to critical scrutiny, Kafka’s works not only expose the dynamics of hyper-rationality, but also give forth a way we may overcome its tyranny and envision alternatives. The article concludes by briefly reviewing the question: Can the post-crisis world be post-Kafkaesque?

Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism itself. The stock market is certainly rational; one can understand it, study it, the capitalists know how to use it, and yet it is com-pletely delirious, it’s mad.

—Gilles Deleuze, “Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium”

Something must have gone wrong in an otherwise smoothly functioning mar-ket, for one fine morning in the fall of 2008, a financial (and economic) crisis struck, and the suboptimal equilibrium metamorphosed into disequilibrium. Since markets and overall economies are inherently equilibrium-prone—as the elegant, mathematical models of economic sciences “prove”—this was only a deviation. Through policy mediation between the state and the market, govern-ments are expected to make a guest appearance by introducing Keynesian-style fiscal programs and massive bailouts. After having balanced the systemic

Administrative Theory & Praxis / March 2012, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 40–59. © 2012 Public Administration Theory Network.

1084-1806 / 2012 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/ATP1084-180634010340

nAsIr 41

symPosIum

forces, hyperrational individuals would once more be optimizing their choices of resource allocation, within hyperrational institutional machines. Therefore, what is to be debated is the desirability of public regulatory regimes making their hand invisible again or the possibility of installing a global financial ma-chinery that would subsume national regulatory architectures (Clark, Dixon, & Monk, 2009; Davies, 2010; Nicolas Sarkozy, quoted in Amiel & Hannon, 2008; Schmidt, 2009; Stiglitz, 2008; Wymeersch, 2010). It is precisely against works of this sort that the present essay is directed.

With the assumption that crises are bound to appear but that management can overcome them, both the state and the market are comfortable constants in academic analysis. Consequently, the specific form of rationalization of hyper-rational institutions is taken as given. Behind the overall rationality of institutional narratives, absurdity appears as an aberration. Is this all? Can’t we reap profounder analysis by viewing the state, the market, and contempo-rary institutionalization as variables rather than constants? It is perhaps only through such an understanding that we would be able to alter the circularity of a contemporary dialectic: confronting wrongness, understanding wrongness, and extending wrongness.

Accomplishing this would mean breaking up the intelligibility of our narratives into many parts, so that we may understand the unintelligibility of it all. There is more to the story than a simple mismatch between claims and obligations. How best to characterize a world where there is a thorough financialization of the economy, where rating agencies are producers of truths that they are not accountable for, where financial institutions bet against in-vestments they would hand over to customers, where risks and speculation determine the level of profit or loss, where “growth” is maintained through heaps of loans, where investors are handed AAA-rated trash, where govern-ment will finally bail out millions of millionaires with taxpayers’ money, and where millions of vacant homes exist in a society with an increasing homeless population?1 What should one call a world where business proceed as usual despite sympathetic early warnings that a full-blown financial crisis was in sight (Roach, quoted in Arends, 2004; Rajan, 2005; Roubini, 2006; Shiller, 2005; Sloan, 2007)? One word: Kafkaesque. No one understood better than Kafka that in modern times the breaking up of narratives into smaller episodes would make us comprehend the logic of an absurd operative in present societ-ies. Thus confronted, Kafka himself was unable to complete all of his novels, which would begin without a beginning, and end without an end—including The Trial, The Castle, and America. If this is so, how is one to read Kafka?

The task before any critic of Kafka is an impossible one, since an interpre-tation would necessarily tell less about Kafka and more about the interpreter. There is in Kafka’s theater—with its multiple, burrow-like entry points, and an infinity of assignable roles—“a place for everyone” (Kafka, 1999a, p. 260). His “Nature Theater” requires neither expertise nor talent. The best that a critic

42 AdmInIsTrATIve Theory & PrAxIs v vol. 34, no. 1

symPosIum

can do is to dig a burrow with tunnels and underground channels of interpre-tation that interconnect and interlock each other, much as the mole does in Kafka’s unfinished “The Burrow.” Criticism gives way to “experimentation” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 120; Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 3). It therefore becomes an art of constructing cellars and burrows, and a simultaneous deconstruction of ivory towers, of hyper-rationalities, of institutional machinery. For a critic reading Kafka, literary criticism and critical inquiry fuse into one inseparable whole. To claim impartiality—as in positivistic forms of research—would be misguided. Rather than appreciating objectivity alone, the contribution of a work should lie in “introducing a significant difference in the field of knowl-edge . . . with access to another figure of truth” (Foucault, 1994, p. 367). With this hope, the present article outlines a value-laden critique of contemporary administrative theory and praxis; readers are forewarned.

Before attempting to downsize ivory towers or dismantle institutional machines, we should inquire into the way these machines are constructed and the way they are operative. Building on Kafka’s analysis, I label these hyperrationalities as paper machines, because “white oil”’ (i.e., paper) acts as their lubricant. The officials in The Castle (das schloß; 1922, published 1926) are deluged under “piles and piles” of files and forms (Kafka, 1999b, p. 310), “heaps” of paper (pp. 310, 395), “piles of documents tied together” (p. 313), and “columns of documents rising and falling together” (p. 313). The paper machine of bureaucracy is a life-giving automaton. It replaces life by producing and reproducing paper-life: One is given a close-fitting, silken-gleaming tunic. One is equipped with a specific toolkit and asked to handle the tools as told. This life has the permanence of a paper, of a written text. Evidently, the written word is not as fleeting and as treacherous as the spoken word. It ensures the immensity of knowledge transmission and, hence, ensures the absolute ignorance of the individual. Commonsense becomes nonsensical. Therefore, an onlooker can grasp nothing, either from the inside (Barnabas) or from the outside (K.): “one never gains anything more than images and the names” (Schopenhauer, 1986, p. 156).2 Socrates is simply stood on his head: Everyone knows one thing—that they know nothing. As the explorer rightly conjectures in the long-story titled “In the Penal Colony,” one is told: “You are a foreigner, mind your own business!” (Kafka, 1993, p. 143).

Thus, the paper machine holds out two claims: hyperrationality and ultra-efficiency (Gulick & Urwick, 1937; Mayo, 1933; Taylor, 1911; White, 1926). The individual—within or without the institution—is subsumed under a generality as only a file label in an unknown file: to be metamorphosed into a subject, an accused on trial, a bug on a bed. With the advent of technology, a paradoxical relationship occurs between the subject and knowledge: Knowl-edge is ever accessible, yet ever distant. Technology merely helps to accelerate this machine function and increases the intersubjective distance. Except for its humming and singing, all the contacts made via the telephone with the Castle

nAsIr 43

symPosIum

authorities are “illusory” and “deceptive,” and create more distractions than connections (Kafka, 1999b, p. 317). Strengthening the machine functioning, technology exponentially increases the power of hyperrationalities—the primordial relationship of modern technology with contemporary financial engineering, financial speculation, credit default swaps, and other tailor-made derivatives is all too apparent. Dominating every sphere of existence, the paper machine colonizes the Abstract: Truth, Justice, and Virtue are only manufactured in quasi-divine institutions such as the Court, Science, or the State in the present post-theological society, and all of them in turn constantly vindicate themselves by referring to the rationality of the Market. Whatever resists the possibility of becoming a cog in the paper-machine—that is, does not fit its criterion of rightness—is Wrong.

Despite absurdity, a profound logic pervades in these paper-machines. It might be a logic of the absurd, but it is logic after all. Therefore, absurdity is reinforced by its logic. So far as the working of its logic is concerned, three broad characteristics within these paper machines can be identified: perma-nence, immanence, and transcendence. Exploring these requires a deeper criti-cal engagement with Kafka’s texts, and to this we now turn our attention.

AccessiNg the KAfKAesqUe throUgh KAfKA’s WorKs

One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the disposition of the things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensat-ing reaction in another part of its machinery—since everything interlocked—and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.

—Franz Kafka, The Trial

The first characteristic of this paper-machine is its permanence. It has the power to outlive its purpose. The sole architectural merit of the castle was its stone-built structure, whose “plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 281)—but there it was still, holding everyone in awe. If the importance of an objective could engineer this paper machine, it nevertheless has the ability to persist illimitably on the strength of precedence alone. Once installed, things are there to remain “forever”—therefore, despite substantial questioning of utilitarianism in later philosophical thought, the utilitarian metaphysical foundations of modern


symPosIum

economics have remained unaffected. Its logic is simply counterlogical; you have to follow it because you have to follow it. If this “Great Wall” once signified an impregnable defense against the northern hordes of barbarians, now it simply fulfills the role of enclosing one’s own people within their four walls. Instead of existing for anyone else’s sake, it exists for its own sake. In this sense, there is the enactment and reenactment of the same historical drama over and over again, just as Beckett’s characters relentlessly and help-lessly seek Godot. The hyperrational constants—that is, marketized state, totalizing market, ultraefficient institutionalization—will always be there. A permanent resistance or a permanent struggle—labeled as “the guilt” by the paper-machine—can only counter this permanence. As Olga explains of her father’s pitiable situation: “Yet before he could be forgiven he had to prove his guilt, and that was denied in all the bureaus. He hit upon the idea that his guilt was being concealed from him” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 394). Even the broad limits of an “acceptable” critique are already charted out—a critique that might eventually become another cog in the machine, or, who knows?, maybe a machine in its own right.

As a result, the absence of any permanent opposition augments the perma-nence of this paper machine: We would not have existed unopposed histori-cally in the first place, had we not been necessary! It is for this reason that in The Trial (der Proceß; 1914–15, published 1925), Joseph K. deserves our sympathy when he believes that “someone must have been spreading lies” about him (Kafka, 1992b, p. 1; translation amended), since he is naive enough to remain unaware of the fact that anything sifted by this paper-machine is not a lie, even if once it used to be. As such, the production and distribution of facts within these hyperrationalities assumes an air of unquestionable, well-established knowledge—the functioning and role of rating agencies is one glaring example.3 Furthermore, this permanence requires a uniformity of functions for its parts and its subparts, and this uniformity is in itself per-manent. The life functions within these machines too are mechanized: Those who meet the ordinary are extraordinary. Conformist mediocrity defines the confines of “normality.”

Quite logically, this does not imply that its parts or subparts, too, are perma-nent. True to its mechanical nature, a number of its various parts/subparts are equally dispensable or changeable, to the vigor of mechanism. Crisis does not entail a crisis of hyperrationality per se; crisis is portrayed as an operational fault rather than a systemic failure. Thus, crisis can never be a crisis of capi-talism, but a problem of information asymmetries, wrong banking practices, flawed incentive structures, overrated CEO markets, misguided computer models, penetration of finance into all sectors of the economy, and so on. The Officer rightly observes in “The Penal Colony”: “This is a very complex machine, it can’t be helped that things are breaking or giving way here and there; but one must not thereby allow oneself to be diverted in one’s general

nAsIr 45

symPosIum

judgment” (Kafka, 1993, p. 142). The malfunctioning of a hyper-rationality requires a further expansion of hyper-rationality.

Since this renders a full-frontal confrontation very dangerous, a sizable number (as exemplified by the village-dwellers in The Castle) simply submit: It might be wrong but nothing can be done, so let us reap the fruits for ourselves for the present! Within these paper-machines, the greatest cog-fear is not that it is a recipient of a paper-life, but that this life might be snatched away at any moment. The paper machine penetrates within the body and radiates from without it. Body becomes a surrogate for paper. The penal colony of the story is literally a place where an actual “sentencing” machine inscribes on the human body; in the end, the machine mutilates the body of the Officer himself, who becomes its willing victim. Body is paperized and pauperized. Thus, hyper-rationalities not only manufacture or create, but “also assign [themselves] the task of administering life[-functions]” (Foucault, 1985, p. 139).The colonization of both mind and body in “The Last Ages of Mankind” (Karl Kraus’s term) forces Kafka to refrain from any psychological excavation of his characters, since the only possible human feeling in this mechanized paper-life-form is no human feeling at all but indifference: Mr. Whoever-You-Are, it is not my concern, go to the next counter please!

One moves from one counter to the other, reaching again the counter from where one started, without benefit. The Castle is surrounded by concentric circles of officials/authorities. One dare not penetrate the first circle, let alone reach the foci: the Castle. As the man from the country is told by the door-keeper in “Before the Law”: “If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest door-keeper. From hall to hall, keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. And the sight of the third man is already more than even I can stand” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 235). K. in The Castle is not fortunate enough to approach even the first sphere of power. It is the circularity, the elusiveness of power. All his efforts to approach Klamm, the first high official in the vil-lage, go as useless as they were necessary. Klamm’s name, in Czech, means a delusion or an apparition, and in German it denotes coldness or the unbearable silence of a person. K. views Klamm as the only link to the invisible Castle, yet one wonders whether he is an actual figure or a simple legend among the village dwellers. The paper machine portrays itself as both the unknown and the unknowable; its powerline revolves around a circular endlessness. Even those distantly related to the Castle invoke its fear and equate themselves with it, as Schwarzer does in the very beginning. Despite uncertainty among the villagers as to the status of the Castle, they accord profound respect to those who might be linked to it. There is a permeation of power, and utterances become statements through such an all-pervasiveness. K. hungrily utilizes any little information (from villagers or Olga) or any contact (either with the self-appointed messenger Barnabas or with his fiancée, Frieda). In his lost


symPosIum

search, K. moves from place to place, meets a number of people, and accepts a minor position as a school janitor, to form at least a tentative map for an entry into the Castle—all this to no avail. Power addresses him constantly, while it keeps on slipping forever.

Therefore, the paper force of this paper machine is a power of immanence. It is not an abstract given; it has innumerable centers of gravity. The paper force leaves one position for the other, one function for the other, without affecting the overall running of the machine. Its power keeps hopping from one power-coordinate to the other. It is threatened neither by the malfunctioning of a specific subpart (the collapse of Lehman Brothers) nor by the breakdown of its part (the insolvency of Iceland); it is simply metamorphosed. Thus, the hyperrationality (read capital or capitalism) in general can be defined as the sum total of specific hyperrationalities (read capitalisms) operating on their own hyperrational basis. We read in The Castle through the mouth of Olga: “How could a single official give a pardon? That could only be done at best by whole authority, and apparently even the authority can only condemn and not pardon” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 395). One might possibly alter a few power-coordinates in a rage of fury but may still confront the “lash” of power in its entirety as before—a revolution that Yeats once defined in a nutshell:

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on. (2000, p. 267)

Nonetheless, every single part constantly refers to this “overall” power. One part is connected to the other in this chain of machine functioning, one part refers to the other, one part is incomplete without the others, and yet one is an emanation of the paper machine in one’s own right. It is permeation through and through, a multiplicity, diffusion. The structure of the Castle is neither a stronghold nor a mansion but “a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two storeys . . . Swarms of crows were circling round it” (Kafka, 1999b, pp. 280–281). No room for crows inside this heaven!

K.’s lot is an indefinite, Sisyphean deferral. He is surprised to discover that everyone knew in advance about his arrival, yet no preparations were made for his reception beforehand. Things are expected to work on their own. Reason has been routinized. In the hyperorderliness of the Castle world, there is no need for K., a petty land surveyor (landvermesser may also mean a country surveyor or an ill-willed mismeasurer): “The frontiers of our little state are marked out and all officially recorded. So what should we do with a Land Surveyor?” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 309). Is it surprising that the calls of a looming crisis—of finance, of economy, of governance—from both critics and sympathetic observers fell on deaf ears?

nAsIr 47

symPosIum

In this way, errors and failures, too, travel from one office to the other, from one room to the other, from one department to the other, from one authority to the other, due to the absence of any single center of gravity. This makes it impossible to retrace the course of failure when anything goes wrong—and things usually go wrong. One is escorted into a perfect maze: an explanation leads to another. It follows the rule of infinite regression—one is reminded of Dickens’s Circumlocution Office in little dorrit. K. thus shockingly replies, “It only amuses me because it gives me insight into the ludicrous bungling which in certain circumstances may decide the life of a human being” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 311). Thus lives are decided!

After metamorphosing an individual into a subject, the hyper-rationalities then go on to treat him as an object. The absence of a static source of respon-sibility entails the equal absence of a responsible “authority.” The dialectical overcoming of these issues, in turn, generates other problems, while making it possible for the hyperrationality to grow in the meantime. “The fetters of a tormented mankind,” Kafka once concluded, “are made of red tape” (Howe, 1992, p. viii). This means that even when error does happen, it is impossible to know whether it is an error at all (Kafka, 1999b, p. 312). Only the error-free hyperrationality itself can divulge if there ever is an error. Therefore, there are no errors! Hence, the market is always right. Hence, “democracy” is always right. Submission becomes the only face-saving device—as the dog remarks in “Investigations of a Dog”: “Agreement is the best weapon of defense” (Kafka, 1993, p. 444).

One cog connects with all the others to form a machine. In this paper-machine, too, each part relates to, refers to the other. In institutions, therefore, each one is the other’s co-worker, comforter, co-sufferer—and, of course, each other’s spy. Therefore, K.’s assistants (Arthur and Jeremiah) are less “assistants” and more “spies” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 301).The society that is cre-ated through such machinations is a spectator society: the flocking peasants relish K.’s anxiety and the helplessness of his struggle, “‘There is always something new to listen to,’ and licked lips as if news were meat and drink” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 290). Things are to be viewed not lived; the paper-machine lives experiences for everyone. For the subject, abstraction becomes reality. It is in this sense that one can understand the depoliticization of workforce in the post-Fordist labor order and the effective disenfranchisement of the masses in the present spectator democratic order.

It is only in a spectator society that a concrete scope for speculation exists. In the present, post–Bretton Woods capitalist order, the scope for speculation—hence, of profit—is extraordinarily insane, where an inverse pyramid exists, grounded on a narrow real sector base, and bulged up by an expansive financial sector ceiling. With the increase in speculation and profit associated with it, the possibility of crisis also appears palpable—speculative craze played a decisive part in the downturns of 1928 and 2008.4 While one


symPosIum

remains busy guessing the guesses of others (Keynes, 1936, pp. 155–160), one tends to forget the commonsense dictum that nothing can come out of nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit). In his short story “The Hunger Artist,” Kafka goes to the extent of portraying even suffering as the spectacle in this audience-society, which is controlled and regulated, or relegated, for “profitable” suffering in the circus of contemporary existence. At best, everyone is innocent; at worst, everyone is guilty. “An innocent child, yes, that you were, truly, but still more truly you have been a devilish human being!” (Kafka, 1993, p. 38).

As speculation in itself is a vast nothingness, a fleeting shadow, positing resistances addressed against it is shown as madness: How can one confront nothingness!? Then, K.’s attempts to break into the Castle appear as madness, as a childish insistence, a near-impossibility. His “madness” is reflected in his moving against the current of abstractions such as the “general will” and the “sovereign will.” All his utterances to the same effect confirm his madness (just as all the protestations to the contrary of Joseph K. in The Trial confirm his guilt). Who else would say this or do that, but the mentally handicapped? Contrarily, is it not possible that in the village K. is one of the few “normal” individuals around, and the Castle itself is the fount of madness? What does equality mean in this world of illusion: to be equally free or equally enslaved? “We want a few mad people now,” remarks Poulengey in Bernard Shaw’s saint Joan, “see where the sane ones have landed us!” (Shaw, 1994, p. 72).

The only possible solace—that is, the private sphere of domestic life—is also taken over by this penetrative paper machine. Its force attempts to totalize everything. As the present crisis most visibly shows, the crisis in governance and the economy has not only affected the public, nonprivate sphere of individual existence, but has entailed an overall breakdown. K. would unhesitatingly sacrifice his fiancée Frieda (i.e., “peace”) in order to meet Klamm (Kafka, 1999b, pp. 412–418). Thus, Reich comments: “Com-panies under supercapitalism no longer have the discretion to be virtuous” (2007, p. 173). The only Abraham possible in this world is the one who can offer his most prized possession to the god of the paper-machine. Women are consequently defeminized and would willingly offer themselves to the high officials (Frieda, Pepi, the Landlady). The Landlady explains: “Is it a question of fidelity? I am faithful to my husband—but Klamm? Klamm once chose me as his mistress, how can I ever lose that honor?” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 321). The female characters that Kafka portrays in his works possess both a warm attraction and a physical repulsion, and are—in one way or the other—both the victims and the accomplices of the hyperrationality. The paradoxical nature of the famous village saying that “official decisions are as shy as young girls” is all too obvious in a world where girls are not shy anymore (Kafka, 1999b, p. 372). Hence, the famous saying is no saying at all. Feminine bodies are the entry pass for entrance into the heaven of the Castle. Subtler and gentler ways of influencing feminine bodies multiply the overall efficiency of the paper

nAsIr 49

symPosIum

machine. Bodies live a separate existence and—for this reason—become more vulnerable. The insistence that one ought to separate one’s self from one’s body helps the hyperrationality to enter uncharted domains, despite the impossibil-ity for the subjects to achieve said separation. In such a hyperorderliness of the world, love too is ordered, instrumentalized, and exists in relation to the contingent order of interests: K. loves Frieda because he loves himself. Love is stripped of its intrinsic value; love is sex—which Kafka portrays as filthy and unbearable as K. and Frieda embrace each other on the floor of a public bar with spilled beer, a stale smell, and a number of onlookers. Just like the complaining jackals in “Jackals and Arabs,” however, we quickly reconcile ourselves with the machine, once we are thrown the crumbs of carrion (Aghion, Caroli, & Garcia-Penalosa, 1999; Krugman, 1990; Rawls, 1971; Sen, 1970, 1997). It is only the steadfast Amalia—who tears away a vulgar note from Sortini, an official, inviting her to come to his bed—that attracts the reader’s notice. She neither gives herself to the officials nor falls back on official or unofficial connections. However, she would defiantly brave the consequences of her actions. Amalia would “tend” to and “feed” her mother and father, who are now in a state of misery and wretchedness due to the unofficial(?) ostracism (Kafka, 1999b, p. 381). Kafka contrasts two very different attitudes in The Castle: the ever-insistent, critical, energetic K. and the calm, uncomplaining Amalia. Perhaps, both of them are protagonist. Perhaps both of them signify counter-paper-life-forms.

The third characteristic of the paper machine is its transcendence. Law in The Trial remains ever separate from those to whom it has delegated the force of its authority. Everyone is connected to the Law, yet no one is the Law. The reason why so many abstract and omnipotent entities can exist in an appar-ently empirically driven information society is unfathomable. Abstractions are not only everywhere, but they remain over there and beyond it. This is the “overallness” of the machine, which is not reducible either to its parts or to its subparts. Statements become statements as they are constructed by the immanent in the name of a transcendent, from the Warders, the Inspector, the Examining Magistrate, the Whipper, to the “accusing chorus” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 267), and so on. The force of beyondness manufactures truth, and gives this truth the power to become the Truth: “It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 242). Even the initiated within the hyperrationalities are at a loss to grasp even slightly the transcendentalism of its mechanized working: “The ranks of officials in this judiciary system mounted endlessly, so that not even the initiated could survey the hierarchy as a whole . . . the final verdict and the reasons for that verdict lay beyond the reach of these officials” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 130). Whereas the force of immanence makes everyone guilty, the strength of transcendence renders everyone innocent. As such, the paper machine is removed both from the subject and from the object. Its hyperrationality—for this precise reason—


symPosIum

colonizes rationality. The Chaplain explains of the doorkeeper: “He belongs to the Law and as such is beyond human judgment” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 242). It is Joseph K.’s fate to remain ever-distant from knowing the Law per se and, consequently, it becomes impossible for him to know whether he is innocent or not: “and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that [one] should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 54). In a world of hyperrationality, with a momentous, technologi-cally backed growth in information, it is exacting for a single mind to grasp even proportionally the dynamics in entirety. Sarcastically, the warder Franz remarks of K.: “See, Willem, he admits that he does not know the Law and yet he claims he’s innocent” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 7). Thinking is arrogated to these institutional machines. As we are dominated by hyperrationality, ratio-nality itself slips away from our clutches. Secrecy—or rather invisibility—is the characteristic of this paper machine par excellence: “You simply knew nothing more about the case and would never know anything more about it” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 134). It is a complete inversion of the Cartesian ego: It thinks, therefore I am.

Alternatively, transcendentals are constructed that speak in the name of the immanent: “public opinion” (Kafka, 1993, p. 228), “many people” (p. 378), “public sentiment” (p. 438), “common welfare” (Kafka, 1999b, p. 394), and “general interest” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 34). All individuals are therefore equal; that is, equally worthless. Freedom becomes a compulsive alignment of oneself to a manufactured reason. The vacuum left by the withering away of Truth and Virtue is taken over by the ever-expanding and the ever-penetrative Law. Law does not represent, symbolize, or allegorize the heavenly or divine in The Trial; Law is Divine, plain and simple. What sustains all this is—in San-tayana’s words—an animal faith. It is the animal faith of the present “animal spirits” (Keynes, 1936, pp. 160–162) that helps them take risks and speculate for profits in an environment characterized by uncertainty. What is required first and foremost is a belief, a faith in the mechanisms of the hyperrationality. Whatever happens, the foundations of this animal faith remain unquestioned. Erich Heller, one of the most notable of Kafka critics, writes, “ ‘It’ does all the thinking that matters . . . [and promises] salvation on one condition only: that one should expand one’s being to bring it within the orbit of that strange Intelligence” (Heller, 1952, p. 159).

Promises salvation? Yes. K.’s salvation is the progress of his case. He visits law courts, enters suffocative offices, consults different people, solicits a lawyer, follows the meticulously absurd proceedings, buys three identical paintings, loses his agility, and drains off his memory, just in order to propel his case forward. No matter what he does or how far he progresses, there is always a further progress to be made. As Joseph K.’s predicament symbol-izes, progress is the driving force in the contemporary lifeworld, no matter how senseless things might be. Then, in a commodified and codified society,

nAsIr 51

symPosIum

progress is established through the Market and the Law. The differing legiti-mation mechanisms of the paper machines thus converge toward a singular justification: progress.

Joseph K.’s progress, nonetheless, remains inconsequential unless he can recruit helpers: “I seek to recruit women helpers” (Kafka, 1992b, pp. 118–119). It is impossible to materialize progress without at the same time materializing a conception of collectivity. Progress is salvation. Progress is the secularized alter-concept of salvation. Both ideas are life-propelling machines. Whereas the materialization “progress” is realizable only through collectivities or generalities, salvation remains an individual question or quest. In this-worldly existence, both remain unachievable. Progress, of course, does not concern itself with the afterworld. How can it be possible, then, that a concept that limits itself to this world is simply unrealizable even in this-worldly existence and yet continues to tyrannize the populace? Progress is a concept that stretches to infinity, just like salvation. However, salvation might be achieved in the afterlife, which in itself is infinite—progress remains in limbo eternally. Joseph K. continues to hope for progress, without ever acquiring it. Its consummation is unrealizable: To believe that progress has taken place would nullify its very perpetuation. Progress there should be, at any cost whatsoever: “Progress had always been made, but the nature of progress could never be divulged” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 135). Given that progress presupposes an infinity, a destination never to be reached yet to be attempted repeatedly, one is compelled to remain at the crossroads. Thus, in a world full of choices, there is no alternative to the framework of choice itself that guarantees progress. Kafka once put this in a nutshell: “To believe in progress is not to believe that progress has already taken place. That would be no belief” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 130). One toys with this concept as this concept toys with one. This leads Kafka to conclude that “there is a goal, but no way; what we call way is only way-vering” (Heller, 1952, p. 173). Thus, the infinite postponement of contemporary existence. Thus, the relevance of Sisyphus, the monomaniac. Thus, the “most impossible of all possible worlds” to live in.

This entails that there is a comic side to modern tragic living. Contemporary existence is a tragicomedy. One laughs at one’s self—“This answer evoked such a hearty outburst of laughter from the Right party that K. had to laugh too. People doubled up with their hands on their knees and shook as if in spasms of coughing” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 43). All the available routes to Joseph K.’s freedom have been blocked in advance: “As a rule all our cases are foregone conclusions” (p. 67). The plot has already been designed, and K. only has his scripted role to live. His indignation—“It is a pointless institution from any point of view. A single executioner could do all that is needed” (p. 169). Therefore, Joseph K.’s “punishment is as just as it is inevitable” (p. 92). Is it even conceivable for K. to actualize freedom in a world where the abstract is colonized, where reason is colonized, and where the private sphere too


symPosIum

remains colonized?—what Habermas terms as the “colonization of lifeworld” (Habermas, 1987). Kafka’s works signify the impossibility of translating the abstract concept of freedom onto the day-to-day plane of contemporary indi-vidual existence. Every sphere of activity judges and assigns value: “The only sensible thing was to adapt oneself to the existing conditions” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 132). Contemporary existence exercises a totalizing colonialism.5

One can redeem (erlöst) oneself through the only “way out” (ausweg): death.6 Thus, at the very outset Joseph K. weighs down the option of “taking his life” so as to free himself from this juggernaut entirely (Kafka, 1992b, p. 9). Conversely, death would also signify for him a defeat, an end, a submis-sion: “he could not bring himself to do it because of its very senselessness” (p. 9). Death appears both as the climax and as the anticlimax of freedom: It stands as the height of freedom and yet is the end of it. Death is the only possibility and yet the termination of all possibilities. One should muster enough courage to face the “abyss” into which “modern” knowledge, action, and hope eventually lead (Heidegger, 1962, p. 173). Kafka portrays death in all its modern ambiguity: Joseph K. welcomes his executioners, who are to “thrust the knife deep into his heart” and “turn it there twice” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 251), as “different visitors” that “he had been expecting” already (p. 245); later he struggles to maintain at least a degree of his personal dignity: “I am not invalid” (p. 246); quickly realizes the “futility of resistance” (p. 247) against submitting himself “to the guidance of his escort” (p. 248); then leads the “solid front” (p. 248) and “forcibly pull[s] his companions [emphasis added] forward” (p. 249); again resigns himself to perceive that “he was supposed to seize the knife himself . . . and plunge it into his own breast” (p. 250); however, “fail[s] to rise to the occasion” (p. 250); and finally is butchered “like a dog,” so that the “shame of it must outlive him” (p. 251). All this in the name of a hyper-rational freedom: the Ape thus informs the audience in “A Report to Academy,” “In passing: may I say that all too often men are betrayed by the word freedom. And as freedom is counted among the most sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can also be sublime” (Kafka, 1993, p. 198). The essential human finitude—of experience, of knowledge, of existence, of action—counters the very possibility of the limitlessness of freedom; the paper-machine would have it otherwise. “It may be the basic characteristic of existence,” remarked Foucault, “that those who know it completely would perish” (Foucault, 1984, p. 96; translation amended). The only freedom that one possesses, then, is to “forego this freedom” (Kraft, 1991, p. 80).

Consequently, Kafka continues exposing the Janus-headed logic of the contemporary Absurd. We find in The Trial the most ordinary in the most unex-pected quarters: Law Court offices located in the ruined attics of a downtown tenement; the Court anteroom which is at the same time the living room of a washerwoman; the studio of the painter Titorelli that is situated in a Law Court office; and, finally, the lumber room of K.’s bank, which serves as a torture

nAsIr 53

symPosIum

room. Or we are surprised at the perfect juxtaposition of incompatibles: law books that contain vulgar and obscene photos; the portrait of a judge who “is actually sitting on a kitchen chair, with an old horse-rug doubled under him” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 118); and a pictorial amalgamation of Justice holding scales (that must stand still) with the goddess of Victory (having wings)—a synthesis that suggests neither the goddess of Justice nor the goddess of Vic-tory “but a goddess of Hunt in full cry” (Kafka, 1992b, p. 161). Hence, in such a lifeworld, failure and success, truth and illusion, “dream and reality” (Kundera, 1996, p. 48), real and unreal, are so closely intermixed that it is impossible to extricate one from the other. One should thenceforth speak of truth/illusion, failure/success, and real/unreal. Irony can best exemplify the contradictoriness of the modern world.

Kafka’s whole art converges on the issues of the modern condition: in its recognition, cognition, and re-cognition. It is with contemporary anguish (angst) that his works share an antagonistic though secret relationship: Kafka will remain relevant as long as the world remains Kafkaesque. Can we hope that the post-crisis world will be a post-Kafkaesque world? Is this hope itself Kafkaesque? It is told that Kafka himself joined in the laughter while he read chapters of The Trial and the draft of The metamorphosis aloud to his friends. Can we too appreciate the dark humor of Kafka’s work in a post-Kafkaesque world and do away with the shudders that presently get hold of us as we go through Kafka?

toWArd A Post-KAfKAesqUe WorLd: A KAfKAesqUe hoPe?

Above all else, capital must be controlled.

—John Maynard Keynes, “Post-War Currency Policy”

The task of accomplishing the negative remains imposed upon us; the positive is already given.

—Franz Kafka, nachgelassene schriften und fragmente

To review the possibility of a post-Kafkaesque world, we would pose another question: Is the transcendence of the present hyper-rational world order pos-sible? Certainly, a reading of Kafka’s works gives the impression that things as they stand are inevitable, that one cannot but resign oneself to this state of affairs. Does not the Visitor in “The Penal Colony” flee in the end, going any-where but remaining there? Were not the struggles of K. and Joseph K. hopeless after all? I would argue the contrary. Rather than making any articulation of systemic struggles impossible, a knowledge of the paper machine may help us


symPosIum

overcome its tyranny. Consequently, knowledge is to precede transformation, and theory becomes the precondition for an alternative praxis.

Instead of describing the helplessness of these struggles, one should inquire into the reason why these struggles became helpless. The fact that these struggles were waged with the same toolkit that is handed over to us by hyperrationality foreordained the failure of these struggles in a substan-tive sense. Therefore, in The Trial Joseph K.’s position at the Bank is almost the same as that of the judges at the Court: a mobile army of errand-runners stands at his call, a standing army of petty clerks waits to assist him, a retinue of attendants holding letters, a clientele that will wait on and on, while he remains accessible only through “personal connections.” The hyperrational-ity of the paper machine has penetrated everything and everyone, from the Prison Chaplain and the young girls at Titorelli’s to—and here comes Kafka’s heterodoxy—Joseph K. himself. Thus, K. repeatedly wishes to have played this legal farce on his home ground: the Bank (Kafka, 1992b, pp. 138, 258). Like the man from the country in “Before the Law,” Joseph K. holds the Law in awe, submits to its workings without compulsion, stays there hopelessly nevertheless, and fails to counter the omnipotence of the hyperrationality through his lone resoluteness. Like the doorkeeper in “Before the Law,” he too is connected to the hyperrationality and lives its paper-life. Joseph K. is the interpreter, the interpreted, and the interpretation. This also means that one is usually enchained to the rest in the fetters of oppression.7 And, in The Castle, K. is no exception: He prefers to call his assistants indistinguishably by a single name for the sake of convenience (Kafka, 1999b, p. 286), likens them saluting him, is repulsed by the masses, and seeks “respectable alliances” (p. 297; Kraft, 1991, p. 105).

A double blind thus operates: As one attempts to instrumentalize every-thing, one is oneself qua subject instrumentalized. Everything can be bartered away— the only valuable value is the power value and the exchange value (Marcuse, 1968, p. 57).8 One specific form of hyperrationality confronts an-other form of hyperrationality. If these struggles were successful, it would be a success of hyperrationality, its extension, transformation, a metamorphosis. An alternative would have to operate beyond the hyperrationalities’ metaphysical background and linguistic toolbox, one that simultaneously transforms the life-practices of individuals and collectivities, and subjects the presumptions of the paper-mechanical rationality to criticism. What we require, therefore, is a “counterdiscourse” (Marx, 2008, p. 599). Such a counterdiscourse may help us pose resistance to hyperrationalities as it excavates their soft under-bellies: accounting for permanence through the permanence of its resistance; addressing immanence by creating so many burrows and cellars; and counter-ing transcendence through its ontological convergence point. In short, one that counters the converging center of hyperrationality: the accumulation regimes: accumulation of men, accumulation of things, and accumulation

nAsIr 55

symPosIum

of capital (Foucault, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1988). It might thus be possible to remove the conditions of the possibility of contemporary hyperrationalities: What has emerged through one historical process can be replaced through another. Signifying its vulnerability, the use of the word “paper” in the term “paper machine” becomes all the more apparent.

However, countering such high-tech, hyperrational, ultraefficient, paper-life-forms through “guerilla, quasi-anarchic tactics . . . carries the prospect of long and bloody campaigns . . . as the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq show” (Johnston, 2008, p. 945). Obviously, things cannot simply reach a dénouement through a single research article. During the present crisis, the fact that theorists are not simply busy locating the black box that may help bring things back to apparent “normality” but are reevaluating things in an overall sense gives a sense of what a post-crisis world would be. Whether we shall live in a post-Kafkaesque world is up to our theorists—and practitioners—to decide.

Notes

1. The housing market in the United States alone witnessed a 75% in-crease in foreclosures in 2007, which jumped to 81% in 2008 (RealtyTrac, 2008, 2009). According to one estimate, things were expect to worsen in 2012 (Credit-Suisse, 2008).

2. I am indebted to Muhammad Ajmal Khan and Farrukh Zaman for bring-ing the influence of Schopenhauer’s thought on Kafka’s imagination to my at-tention.

3. Ratings of debt and a supervisory review of banks’ management systems play a central role in the maintenance of global financial stability, as adopted in the 1996 Basel II accords. Since a number of banks that fulfilled these criteria were in serious trouble during most of 2008 and 2009, it is evident that the Basel II provisions have failed to achieve their objective (Ansari, 2010, pp. 166–167).

4. The period from 1973 to 2000 was marked by a frequency of financial crisis comparatively greater than the Bretton Woods and the gold standard era (Eichengreen & Bordo, 2002). A World Bank study counts 114 episodes of sys-temic banking crises from 1975 to 1999 in 93 countries and 51 borderline banking crises in 46 countries (Caprio, 2002).

5. By implication, such a view of colonization holds out a possibility of tran-scending the discourse of post-colonialism, since this would entail that the West became the first—and remains the paradigmatic—victim of its own colonization.

6. Although it is difficult to establish a one-to-one correspondence between the ongoing crisis and present suicide rates, it has been noted that the European suicide rate rose sharply from 2007 to 2009 (Stuckler, Basu, Suhrcke, Coutts, & McKee, 2009, 2011).

7. On December 5, 1912, Kafka wrote to Felice Bauer: “Nothing, you know,


symPosIum

gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one’s ability to do so” (Kafka, 1983, p. 195).

8. At present, however, it is difficult to separate power value from exchange value, since the latter has expanded into every other domain.

refereNces

Aghion, P., Caroli, E., & Garcia-Penalosa, C. (1999). Inequality and economic growth: The perspective of the new growth theories. Journal of economic literature, 37, 1615–1660.

Amiel, G., & Hannon, P. (2008, October 16). EU to push global oversight of top financial firms. Wall street Journal. Available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122410374174437725.html, accessed October 21, 2008.

Ansari, J.A. (2010). The international financial regulatory regime and Pakistan’s response. Pakistan Business review, 12, 163–196.

Arends, B. (2004, November 23). Economic armageddon predicted. Boston herald.

Benjamin, W. (1969). Franz Kafka on the tenth anniversary of his death. In W. Benjamin, Illuminations (pp. 111–140). New York: Schocken.

Caprio, G. (2002, July 10). episodes of systemic and borderline financial crises. Available at http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:20699588~pagePK:64214825~piPK:64214943~theSitePK:469382,00.html, accessed August 13, 2011.

Clark, G., Dixon, A., & Monk, A. (2009). managing financial risks: From global to local. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Credit-Suisse. (2008, December 4). Foreclosure update: over 8 million foreclosures expected. Available at www.chapa.org/pdf/ForeclosureUpdateCreditSuisse.pdf, accessed September 28, 2011.

Davies, H. (2010). Global financial regulation after the credit crisis. Global Policy, 1, 185–190.

Deleuze, G. (2009). Capitalism: A very special delirium. In F. Guattari, & S. Lotringer (Eds.), Chaosophy: Texts and interviews, 1972–1977 (pp. 35–52). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature. (D. Polan, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Eichengreen, B., & Bordo, M. (2002). Crises now and then: What lessons from the last era of financial globalization. Available at www.nber.org/papers/w8716/, accessed August 13, 2011.

Foucault, M. (1977). discipline and punish: The birth of prison. London: Penguin.

Foucault, M. (1979). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An introduction. London: Penguin.

nAsIr 57

symPosIum

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. (C. Gordon, Ed.). New York: Pantheon.

Foucault, M. (1984). Foucault reader. (P. Rabinow, Ed.). London: Penguin.Foucault, M. (1985). history of sexuality: Vol 1. The use of pleasure.

(R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin.Foucault, M. (1988). Politics, philosophy, culture: Interviews and other

writings 1977–1984. (L.D. Kritzman, Ed.). New York: Routledge.Foucault, M. (1994). Des travaux [Works]. In M. Foucault, dits et écrits

[Sayings and writings]. Paris: Gallimard.Gulick, L., & Urwick, L. (1937). Papers on the science of administration.

New York: Columbia University Press.Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action: Vol 2. lifeworld

and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Heidegger, M. (1962). Kant and the problem of metaphysics (J.S. Churchill, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Heller, E. (1952). The disinherited mind. Cambridge, UK: Bowes & Bowes.

Howe, I. (1992). Introduction. In F. Kafka, The castle (pp. v–xxi). London: David Campbell.

Johnston, R. (2008). Review: The limits to capital; The new imperialism; A brief history of neo-liberalism; Spaces of global capitalism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98, 941–948.

Kafka, F. (1983). letters to Felice (E. Heller, J. Born, J. Stern, & E. Duckworth, Trans.). Singapore: Richard Clay (S.E. Asia).

Kafka, F. (1992a). nachgelassene schriften und fragmente [Posthumous writings and fragments] (Vol. 2). (J. Schillemeit, Ed.). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

Kafka, F. (1992b). The trial (E. Muir & W. Muir, Trans.). London: David Campbell.

Kafka, F. (1993). Collected stories (E. Muir & W. Muir, Trans.). London: David Campbell.

Kafka, F. (1999a). America. In F. Kafka, The complete novels (pp. 131–272). (E. Muir & M. Willa, Trans.). London: Vintage Books.

Kafka, F. (1999b). The castle. In F. Kafka, The complete novels (pp. 277–454). (E. Muir & W. Muir, Trans.). London: Vintage.

Keynes, J.M. (1936). The general theory of employment, interest, and money. London: Macmillan.

Keynes, J.M. (1941). Post-war currency policy. In J.M. Keynes, D. Moggridge, & E. Johnson (Eds.), The collected writings of John maynard Keynes (Vol. 25, pp. 21–33). London: Macmillan.

Kraft, H. (1991). someone like K.: Kafka’s novels (R.J. Kavanagh, Trans.). Würzburg: Konigshausen and Neumann.


symPosIum

Krugman, P. (1990). The age of diminished expectations: u.s. economic policy in the 1990s. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kundera, M. (1981, May 24). In Saint Garta’s shadow. Times literary supplement.

Kundera, M. (1996). Testaments betrayed: An essay in nine parts. (L. Asher, Trans.). New York: HarperCollins.

Marcuse, H. (1968). one dimensional man: A study in the ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Marx, J. (2008). Failed state fiction. Contemporary literature, 49, 597–633.Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. New

York: Macmillan.Rajan, R. (2005, November). has financial development made world

riskier? Working paper 11728. Available at National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w11728.pdf, accessed September 28, 2011.

Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. London: Oxford University Press.RealtyTrac. (2008, January 29). u.s. foreclosure activity increases 75

percent in 2007. Available at www.realtytrac.com/content/press-releases/us-foreclosure-activity-increases-75-percent-in-2007-3604/, accessed August 17, 2011.

RealtyTrac. (2009, January 15). Foreclosure activity increases 81 percent in 2008. Available at www.realtytrac.com/content/press-releases/foreclosure-activity-increases-81-percent-in-2008–4551/, accessed August 13, 2011.

Reich, R. (2007). supercapitalism: The transformation of business, democracy, and everyday life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Roubini, N. (2006, January). Why central banks should burst bubbles? Available at http://web-docs.stern.nyu.edu/salomon/docs/crisis/Bubbles%20and%20Monetary%20%20Policy%20-%20Roubini.pdf, accessed September 11, 2011.

Schmidt, A.A. (2009). Geopolitics, global governance and crisis narratives. Ids Bulletin, 40, 89–100.

Schopenhauer, A. (1986). sämtliche werke (Vol. 1). (W.F. Löhneysen, Ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Sen, A.K. (1970). Collective choice and social welfare. San Francisco: Holden-Day.

Sen, A.K. (1997). From income inequality to economic inequality. southern economic Journal, 64, 383–401.

Shaw, G.B. (1994). saint Joan. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.Shiller, R. (2005). Irrational exuberance (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton

University Press.Sloan, A. (2007, October 29). House of junk. Fortune, 117. Stiglitz, J. (2008). The future of global governance. In J. Stiglitz, &

nAsIr 59

symPosIum

N. Serra (Eds.), The Washington consensus reconsidered: Towards a new global governance (pp. 309–323). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stuckler, D., Basu, S., Suhrcke, M., Coutts, A., & McKee, M. (2009). The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: An empirical analysis. lancet, 374, 315–323.

Stuckler, D., Basu, S., Suhrcke, M., Coutts, A., & McKee, M. (2011). Effects of the 2008 recession on health: A first look at European data. lancet, 378, 124–125.

Taylor, F.W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York: Harper & Brothers.

White, L.D. (1926). Introduction to the study of public administration. New York: Macmillan.

Wymeersch, E. (2010). Global and regional financial regulation: The viewpoint of a European securities regulator. Global Policy, 1, 201–208.

Yeats, W.B. (2000). The great day. In W.B. Yeats, The collected poems of W.B. yeats (p. 267). London: Wordsworth Editions.

Muhammad Ali Nasir ([email protected]) is a graduate student of public administration at the University of Karachi, Pakistan. His study interests are in the domains of political theory, critical philosophy, South Asian history, and Islamic modernism.

Copyright of Administrative Theory & Praxis (M.E. Sharpe) is the property of M.E. Sharpe Inc. and its content

may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express

written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Logic of the Absurd: Reading Kafka in a Kafkaesque World

Documents

Transcript of Logic of the Absurd: Reading Kafka in a Kafkaesque World