The Anatomist of Power: Franz Kafka and the Critique of Authority

167 Pages·2019·2.74 MB·English

by  Costas Despiniadis, Stelios Kapsomenos

THE ANATOMIST
OF POWER
FRANZ KAFKA AND THE
CRITIQUE OF AUTHORITY
COSTAS DESPINIADIS
Translated by
Stelios Kapsomenos
Montréal • New York • Chicago • London
Copyright © 2019 BLACK ROSE BOOKS LTD.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any
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from the Canadian Licensing Agency, Access Copyright, with the exception of
brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine.
BLACK ROSE BOOKS No. TT394
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Despiniadis, Costas
[Franz Kafka. English]
The anatomist of power : Franz Kafka and the critique of authority / Costas
Despiniadis ; translated by Stelios Kapsomenos.
Revised and expanded translation of: Franz Kafka : o anatómos tès exousías.
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55164-656-5 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55164-658-9 (hardcover).--
ISBN 978-1-55164-686-2 (PDF)
1. Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Authority.
I. Kapsomenos, Stelios, translator II. Title. III. Title: Franz Kafka. English.
PT2621.A26Z67713 2018 833’.912 C2018-906182-0
C2018-906183-9
CP. 35788 Succ. Léo-Pariseau,
Montréal, QC, H2X 0A4
CANADA
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Black Rose Books is the publishing project of Cercle Noir et Rouge.
To Sofia Sazo
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments...................................5
Preface............................................6
Chapter One
The Anatomist Of Power. The Faces of Faceless Power:
The Trial, The Castle, and Beyond......................11
Chapter Two
Amerika. The Romantic Anti-capitalism of Kafka ..........37
Chapter Three
Metamorphosis. The Authority of the Raging Patriarch.......62
Chapter Four
Law, Writing, Punishment, The Body.
A Visit to the Penal Colony ...........................90
Chapter Five
The Burrow. The Solid Foundations of The Castle.........101
Chapter Six
Kafka And The Anarchists. An Obscured Relationship .....116
Chapter Seven
Kafka And The Issue Of (Anti-)Authority.
A Non-literary Discussion...........................133
Bibliography .....................................158
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Uri Gordon, who fuelled the idea of an
English translation for this book during our chance meeting at
Ioannina in May 2017. Uri firmly believed in and supported
the possibility of an English edition even before I did. Thanks
are also due to the translator Stelios Kapsomenos and the
editors Jonathan ‘Mik’ Smith and Jason Bentsman, who went
to great pains to translate the Greek text and refine it. And to
friends George Prevedourakis, Kostas Alexiou, Michael Löwy,
Eleni Varikas, Dimitris Kalavrouziotis, Thodoris Tsomidis, and
Charalampos Tzibitzidis, who provided assistance at various
stages of the preparation of the book. I owe a special thanks to
Dimitrios Roussopoulos of Black Rose Books, who embraced
the idea of an English publication from day one. The realization
of my book by this historical libertarian publishing house is a
great honor. Finally, I wish to thank Sofia Sazo for her continuous
support and encouragement.
5
PREFACE
Although possibly not commonly known to a wider reading
audience, there is a long tradition of anarchist thinkers studying
and interpreting literary works.
By way of example: Peter Kropotkin, who never desisted
from occupying himself with revolutionary matters, also penned
a full history of Russian literature in 1905. Emma Goldman, the
ubiquitous revolutionary activist of her time, wrote important essays
on Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Yeats, and produced the highly important
The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. The martyred Gustav
Landauer authored essays on Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Strindberg,
Whitman, and Oscar Wilde. Alexander Herzen, too, never ceased
writing on literary and wider artistic issues.
The significant element contributed by this tradition of
literary critique is that of a multifaceted reading which—without
overlooking the fact that a literary work is first and foremost an
aesthetic phenomenon—embeds political, philosophical, social,
and biographical elements into the subject being reviewed.
Presuming that the primary creative process neither
materializes in a sequestered ivory tower, isolated from the wider
social and political context of an era, nor do the biographical details
of the writer leave one disinterested, likewise its secondary critical
study should not ignore such elements by remaining secluded
and confined to a sterile workshop of academic self-referentiality.
By running with the torch of this tradition, the present work
attempts to read the seminal works of Kafka, making links with
the writer’s wider political, philosophical, and social reference
points, highlighting the elements where his literary creativity
meets or echoes the anarchist ideas he was familiar with.
Though acknowledging that the merit of a literary work is
not determined by its political perspectives, in order to achieve a
6
Preface
more multi-dimensional conception of the Kafkian universe, we
shed light on this overlooked and muted aspect.
To examine these issues, we initiate discussion of Kafka’s
widely known novels and short stories, such as The Castle, The
Trial, Amerika, The Metamorphosis, and In the Penal Colony. Our
primary focus concentrates on those parameters in his works
confirming Kafka’s anarchist criticism of power, bureaucracy,
capitalism, patriarchy, prisons, judicial authority, and law.
Furthermore, Kafka’s interest in anarchist ideas can be
confirmed by painstakingly combing through his Diaries, his
biographies, as well as delving into memoirs of people associated
with the writer, which mention a number of Kafka’s relevant
readings (e.g., Peter Kropotkin, Alexander Herzen et al.), and
his active participation in the activities of Prague’s anarchist
circles between 1909-1912, such as demonstrations, solidarity
actions, etc.
Finally, the book discusses why this distinct dimension
of Kafka’s life and work has been largely obscured in academic
research. And additionally, why it is that many biographers seem
averse to providing their readers with any hint of this dimension.
When his association with anarchist thought indeed gets
mentioned, why do they try to downplay it?
It seems reasonable to pose the question: “For what reasons
have all these elements supporting an anarchist interpretation
been concealed or rejected?”
Of Kafka’s ‘interpreters,’ there is no better place to begin than
with his close friend Max Brod. Undoubtedly, we owe to him
the preservation of his work. One of the very few cases of a great
writer having no self-confidence whatsoever in their own writings,
Kafka had left clear instructions for his literary remains either to
be destroyed or left undisseminated. However, his friend chose to
disobey Kafka’s stipulation, and undertook their publication.
This act of defiance, coupled with the fact that Max Brod
wrote the first biography of Kafka, the first attempt at interpreting
the Kafkian world and work, had the effect of elevating him for
many years to the status of the leading authority.
7
Costas Despiniadis
Despite Brod undoubtedly being a good friend, at the same
time he was a very bad ‘interpreter.’ Himself holding strong
aesthetic, philosophical, and religious views (in no way shared
by Kafka), he ascribed ‘a positive image’ to the author, seeking
to discover optimistic theological messages in his friend’s work—
characteristically calling him a ‘saint’—that befitted his own
theoretical universe. (Often in his Diaries and correspondences
Kafka admits to ‘keeping various things’ from Brod that the latter
disagreed with in order ‘not to aggrieve him.’)
Nevertheless, precisely because Brod had been Kafka’s close
friend and, moreover, the literary executor and ‘rescuer’ of Kafka’s
works, for many years any challenge to his interpretations was
viewed as sacrilegious. The official critique afforded Brod a sense
of ‘hereditary right’ to his interpretations of the Kafkian corpus,
with the consequence that his own particular perspective set the
tone for many years of Kafka analysis.
Regardless, however, of what role Max Brod played, given the
continuing involvement with Kafka by many scholars to date, the
question of this concealment persists.
First, we should bear in mind that most critics and scholars,
not only regarding Kafka, but with every literary work, inevitably
cast personal shadows based on their own perceptions of the
world over the things they evaluate,.
Clearly, in an academic environment—the provenance of
most Kafka scholars, and the majority of literary academics—
anarchists, and even those with a basic knowledge of anarchist
theories, are a rare breed (without this necessarily compromising
whatever academic competence they may otherwise possess).
Some, in fact, having been theoretically moulded in a
conservative environment, are inherently biased against this
theoretical tradition.
Therefore, not least in Kafka’s case, even when confronted
with indisputable evidence, they either ignore it, or actively
diminish its significance.
Indicatively, when Kafka writes in his Diaries, on 15
October, 1913, “Don’t forget Kropotkin!” (the autobiography of
8
Preface
this seminal anarchist thinker was among his favourite books),
a contemporary scholar, in blatant disregard of the fact that the
hundreds of pages of Kafka’s diaries constitute an intellectual
and literary account that is never merely a repository of notes
regarding loose ends or everyday tasks, comments: “What
are we to read into these words: an intellectual or emotional
commitment, a special indebtedness—or simply a note on an
overdue library book?”
In the same vein, other scholars, while accepting the validity
of discussing the political viewpoints of his work, at best use
terms such as ‘socialism’ or ‘libertarian socialism,’ as if mention of
anarchism is somehow forbidden.
Additionally, Kafka’s many biographers either omit any
mention of his confirmed affiliations with the anarchists of
Prague, or feel free to claim that all these testimonies are ‘almost
certainly fabricated,’ albeit while failing to explain why these
demonic anarchist conspirators chose Kafka, out of all the writers,
to present as one of their own.
Thus, they wholly discard essential biographical evidence
which confirms his affiliations with anarchists from Prague. Such
as that of his young friend Gustav Janouch—although people
who knew Kafka very well on a personal level, like Max Brod, or
his last lover, Dora Diamant, attest to Kafka’s representation in
Janouch’s book as bearing a true resemblance to reality. The same
applies to the testimonies of other contemporary Czech anarchists
confirming their acquaintance with Kafka.
Thus, by staying loyal not only to the writings of Kafka
himself, but also to the available biographical accounts, in this
book we attempt to portray the true dimension of Kafka’s anarchist
interests, neither exaggerating them, nor downplaying them as
if it would be unthinkable for a great writer to be intrigued by
anarchist ideas.
We certainly do not maintain that this interpretative key opens
all doors to the vast edifice comprising Kafka’s work; far from it.
Still, the question remains why official critique has chosen to stop
its ears to the radical criticism voiced by this brilliant ‘anatomist
9