smith 2008 reading kafka's trial politically

Reading Kafka’s Trial Politically: Justice–Law–Power

Graham M. SmithLancaster University, County South, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

This article offers a political reading of Franz Kafka’s posthumous work The Trial.In this novel, the main protagonist (Joseph K.) is subject to an arrest and trialconducted by the ambiguous authority of a shadowy court and its officials. Thisarticle explores Joseph K.’s experience of being subject to the Law, and relates thisto our own understanding and experience of political subjectivity in modern times.K.’s doomed search for order through a ‘permanent resolution’ of his case is relatedto the modern desire for order: Specifically, the desire for both philosophical andpolitical frameworks that provide narratives or certainty. Here modernity isunderstood to be characterized by an anxiety brought about by a crisis inauthorship and authority. The article then considers K.’s desire for justice and theLaw, and his entanglement with the power of the court, as analogous to the modernexperience of the triad of justice–law–power, which is subsumed under the bannerof ‘sovereignty’. In particular, the article explores K.’s inability to locate, read, orfix the Law; a problem that is also reflected in the aporia of sovereignty as justice–law–power. K.’s experience alerts us to the contradictions in the triad justice–law–power; contradictions that occur as although each member of the triad is dependentupon the other two, each member of the triad also seeks to exclude or deny thisdependency. Thus, read politically, K.’s struggle in The Trial can be seen as areflection of the modern struggle with sovereignty as the triad justice–law–power,and the impasse that K. reaches is also the impasse that modernity has reached.Contemporary Political Theory (2008) 7, 8–30. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300330

Keywords: Kafka; sovereignty; law; justice; power; modernity

‘Everyone strives to attain the Law’Franz Kafka, The Trial

Introduction

From the opening arrest to its dark and despairing conclusion, The Trial drawsits reader into the unremitting anxiety that shadows the labyrinthine corridorsof its story.1 Produced at the beginning of the 20th century The Trial can be

Contemporary Political Theory, 2008, 7, (8–30)r 2008 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1470-8914/08 $30.00

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considered as both symptomatic and illustrative of the peculiar and terriblefeatures of that century. It reflects the rise of bureaucracy, the power of law,and the atomization of the individual, and seems to prefigure the abuse ofpower, sinister regimes of detention and surveillance, state incompetence, andthe institutionalization of sadism. This article approaches The Trial from thepoint of view of the political. Here we attempt to unite The Trial with thepolitical structures that are said to underlay or shape the dark 20th century.Specifically Joseph K.’s search for the Law is related to our own, and it isargued that the narrative of The Trial can help us to reflect on the peculiarfeatures of Law in modernity. It is suggested that in modernity Law is united,through sovereignty, with Justice and Power. Both of these extremes arenecessary to Law, and Law is the modern response to them. In the narrative ofThe Trial K. can be seen to be subject to both of these extremes, and thus ispreoccupied with the need to attain the Law. Moreover, it is also suggestedhere that the subsuming of the triad justice–law–power under sovereignty is apeculiarly modern response to the question of order. In modernity, the need fororder is answered by both authorship and authority being placed in the modernsubject. Order is created and maintained by sovereign acts of authorship andauthorization. In turn, these sovereign acts rest upon the subject’s ability toboth reason and will. This founding of order is inherently unstable andsusceptible to alternative orders created through different configurations ofjustice and power. The modern subject, then, is doomed to seek a foundationfor the Law, a foundation that is not (and cannot be) forthcoming. In thenarrative of The Trial this is reflected in K.’s efforts to attain the Law — hisbelief that such a rational order is possible, and his refusal to accept the merenecessity of the Law, and to look, instead, for some extra-legal authority.

In approaching Kafka’s text in this way we can relate the narrative andthemes of K.’s struggle to attain a resolution of his ‘case’ with an account of thepolitical. If there is a Law, then there must be an author of the Law; and ifthere is a Law, then the Law must not only make sense (i.e. be consistent andprovide meaning) but it must also be discernable (through reason) and rest onsome extra-legal authority. This line of reasoning and the experiences that itinduces are symptomatic not only to the world of K., but also to the conditionof the modern subject. Thus, The Trial is a story that can lead us to reflectupon sovereignty; and it is suggested here that that sovereignty can beunderstood as to unite justice, law, and power. In modernity it is the actions ofsovereignty that save the modern subject from the emptiness of mere existence.In some way, through the unifying act of sovereignty, justice can beapproached, and mere power held in abeyance. In Derridian terms The Trialspeaks to our own experience of the aporia of ‘sovereignty’ in modernity(Derrida, 1993, 8, 12, 20–21); an experience that sees the question of orderanswered through the establishment of a sovereign’s law as the response to the

Graham M. SmithReading Kafka’s Trial Politically

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impulses or forces of justice and power, but a law that is in radical flux. Thus,there is an intersection between order–sovereignty–law (on the one axis), andjustice–law–power on the other.

Through reading The Trial politically we can identify and reflect upon theaporia that holds at the centre of sovereignty as understood as the product ofthe justice–law–power triad, and as the signifier of Political Modernity itself(Edkins and Pin-Fat, 1999, 10).2 The experience of the thought of sovereigntybrings us to an aporia in the sense that the thought of sovereignty, althoughnecessary and inescapable in modern times, also represents an impasse or an‘impossible passage’ (Derrida, 1993, 8). It is a threshold that we may encounter,but cannot transverse. We cannot think ourselves beyond it, nor can we thinkof ourselves without it. Indeed, The Trial is particularly well-placed to facilitatethis aporia as it is argued here that it is concerned with the affects of this triad,and explores its themes against a wider concern with the human condition. Inthis respect, The Trial can be read as an exploration of some aspects of politicsin contemporary times. As noted, clearly there is a mapping and prefiguring ofbureaucracy, juridical power, institutional sadism, alienation, the blurring ofthe public and private, regimes of surveillance, and the quest for categoriza-tion, rationalization, and calculation. However, The Trial can also be seen tofocus on the foundations of these phenomena insofar as it explores the widertheme of the operation and relations of justice, law, and power.

The remainder of this article explores these themes under three relatedsections. The first of these makes the case for reading The Trial politically, andoutlines the limits to such an endeavour. Specifically, while it is not claimedhere that The Trial contains an overt or even covert political theory, The Trialdoes suggest and explore political themes in its treatment of K.’s frustratingsearch for Law. In particular, The Trial suggests the affects generated by the‘unknowable’ and ‘unreadable’ aspects of the Law and the question mark thusplaced over the possibility of authorship or legislating. It is this legislating,understood as a form of authorship, that connects directly to the political. Thesecond section moves on to discuss how this political reading raises the idea oforder, and how the establishment of order has become the key task of theory inmodernity. In particular, modernity is characterized as being infused with ananxiety as the modern subject attempts to both author and authorize their ownorder through legislation. In the third section these ideas are played out in adiscussion that parallels K.’s search for the Law with our own understandingof sovereignty as the banner for the triad justice–law–power. This views theideas of justice–law–power as being ensnared in a game of authorship andauthorization which destabilizes any attempts to secure order. Thus, it isconcluded that while the law is certainly necessary if we are to avoid theextremes of total justice or bare power, and while the law is political insofar asit is the act of legislating not just particular orders but order as such, it is also


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radically unstable and threatens to annihilate the very politics it seeks to secure,authorize, or legislate. In this sense, the modern search for the Law is both asnecessary and as frustrating as the search played out by Joseph K. and we arealso caught between the extremes of justice and power.

Reading The Trial Politically

First we must raise the question of what it could mean to read The Trialpolitically. Furthermore, we must consider how such a political reading relatesto previous (and more established) readings. It is suggested here that The Trialcan be read politically not just in the sense that we could approach the textfrom a variety of political standpoints but that (specifically) the story of TheTrial allows us to connect together and reflect upon our own relationship to therole of authorship in modernity, and especially the political act of legislating orauthoring politics through Law. More concretely, the political reading of TheTrial offered here understands K.’s search for the Law to be a search for orderitself: order understood as an act of legislation. First, however, something mustbe said to situate this political reading in relation to other readings andespecially the religious reading. This perspective draws not only upon thetranscendental qualities of Kafka’s works, it also pays attention to his ownrelationship with Judaism (Suchoff, 1994, 137; Bruce, 2002, 150–168)3 and theauthority of Max Brod (Kafka’s friend and executor).4 However, while manyhave considered Kafka’s works to be best understood in religious terms, thereremains a strong case to be made for approaching the works politically (Dodd,2002, 131–149). It is of course permissible to infer that Kafka’s works wereinfluenced by his relationship to Judaism, and (in recognition of the‘established’ reading of The Trial) we would expect his works to reflect thesereligious concerns. However, what it is all too easy to overlook is the fact thatnot only was Judaism connected to the socio-political situation of Kafka’sPrague, but it is also a religion that focuses on Law and the interpretation ofthe Law (Suchoff, 1994, 137, 143, 152–153).5 Given this, just as it would seemstrange if Kafka’s work did not have a religious dimension, it would also bestrange if his work did not also have a political dimension. If we attempt tointerrogate Kafka’s writing with the political in mind what we find are nothidden political critiques in the style of More or Swift, nor manifestos orovertly political messages in the style of an Orwell or a Huxley, but a reflectionon the wider human context of the political itself.6

We can see then that while there is a tendency to read The Trial from areligious perspective this does not exclude the possibility of reading the textpolitically (Dodd, 2002, 133). Indeed, it could be argued that the mark of trulygreat literature is precisely that it can suggest multiple meanings and be read


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from a variety of perspectives (Camus, 1973, 114).7 It is in this way that we canunderstand the approach taken by those who would advocate a politicalreading of Kafka as being ‘parasitic’ in J. Hillis Miller’s sense of that term(Miller, 1979, 219–221). A political reading of Kafka is parasitic not because itis dependent upon subverting the dominant religious reading of the text, butbecause it (like those established religious readings) feeds on the ‘host’ of thetext itself. Thus, it runs parallel to (and not against) other readings that alsofeed from the text.8

From this perspective not only does The Trial allow a political reading, itactually suggests such a reading. Indeed, The Trial suggests not only one butseveral political readings. First, Kafka’s work can be considered a political actin-and-of itself; a political act that must be viewed against the background tothe situation of Jews in Prague (and Europe generally) in Kafka’s own time.Second, the output can be connected to the religion of Judaism itself, a religionthat merges the themes of the political and religious both in the search for aJewish identity, but also as a religion that is intimately connected to thefulfilment and interpretation of the Law. Third, The Trial opens up reflectionof broader political themes. While some, such as Adorno (1967, 259) andStern (1976), have gone as far as to see a pre-emption of totalitarianism inKafka’s work, at the very least Kafka’s world (and the world of The Trial)remains a world dominated by bureaucracy, power relations, the blurring ofpublic and private. In many ways, K. (like many of the characters in Kafka’swork) is suffering the plight of the refugee who is both in politics and outsideof the law (cf. Arendt, 1951, 290–302; Agamben, 1995, 2000, 15–25). Fourth(and for our purposes most significantly), we should not overlook theostensible story of The Trial: One man’s struggle to attain the Law. It isthis fourth perspective that forms our main focus; a focus that connects us tothe themes and triad of justice–law–power and the plight of the political subjectin modernity.

In summary, it is not being suggested here that The Trial contains an esotericpolitical theory, or that it even comments (directly or even indirectly) on thespecific or historical political situation of Kafka’s times. What is beingsuggested here is that, approached politically, The Trial can suggest valuableinsights into our own political condition, and especially to help us identify andgrapple with the relationship between that condition and justice–law–power.The Trial forms a point of departure which takes us into our wider politicalconcerns. The literary expression of the plight of the individual in late politicalmodernity reflected in The Trial invites us to explore the themes and ourunderstanding of the political; and in particular, the relationship betweenpower, law, and justice. In this sense, it is possible to endorse the words of JaneBennett when she writes that, ‘Kafka did not write political theory, but perhapshis works express one’ (Bennett, 1991, 80).


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We have already seen, in passing, how The Trial may be read as a startingpoint to reflect on both the concrete situation of modern and contemporarytimes (especially through justice, surveillance, and the blurring of jurisdiction),and how The Trial can be used to suggest an exploration of ‘sovereignty’understood as a banner for the triad justice–law–power. However, The Trialcan be understood to have another political dimension: a dimension that islocated both within the themes and narrative of the story itself, and (as somehave observed) in Kafka’s very attitude or relationship with his work: readingand writing. The position is complex as it brings together several concerns oraspects. First, it raises the issue of Kafka’s own relationship to reading andwriting, and the reader of novels. Second, it raises the issue of reading andwriting in relation to the presentation of the Law within the narrative of TheTrial. And finally, the position raises the wider issue of reading and writing inrelation to modernity, subjectivity, sovereignty, and justice–law–power triad.As we shall see this is a question about order and the foundations andauthorship of order, and it is to this that we now turn.

Bringing Order to the Court: Authorship and Anxiety in Modernity

One of the ways in which Kafka’s work speaks to the political is that it takes usback to an encounter with the human condition. In the disjointed, opaque, andnightmarish world of The Trial Joseph K. is left to piece together the clues ofhis own arrest for himself; K. is never told the nature of the charges that arebrought against him, what evidence he must confront, or on what authority theCourt rests (Kafka, 1999). What K. is confronted with is the problem ofmaking sense of his own predicament. However, what The Trial also shows isthat, despite the appearance of integration, the protagonists are in fact revealedto be isolated and even alienated from each other and an understanding of theLaw (Emrich, 1968, 80–83; Goebel, 2002, 44, 47). At points K. comestantalizingly close to a possible understanding of his situation and seems to bemaking progress, only to have this illusion shattered, his efforts undermined, orreversed (Adorno, 1967; Kafka, 1999, 55, 124, 138). Indeed, what is so trulytantalizing about K.’s plight is that he focuses so intensely on the belief that itis possible to understand his situation. Every attempt to access the Court,to influence its officials, to gain favour from its entourage, to read the Law, toknow the charges against him, and to prove his innocence, bears witness to thebelief that such a grounding and resolution are, in principle, possible. WhatJoseph K. exhibits, above all else, is the commitment to the idea that the Lawcan be known and understood rationally, and that he is capable of thisrationality (Kafka, 1999, 126).9 What makes all of this nightmarish for JosephK. is his seeming inability to understand — what makes it all so nightmarish


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for the reader is the seeming impossibility of doing so. There is an unremittinganxiety and horror in the fate of Joseph K. not simply because he experiencesthis himself, but because we also experience this in relation to him, andourselves. In doing so we are brought to reflect on the basic relationshipbetween the condition of being human and the foundations of politics: the needfor order and the impossible search that this entails. This search for order ischaracteristic not only of K.’s condition, but can be said to characterizemodernity as such. Moreover, just as The Trial exposes tensions andcontradictions in K.’s task, these tensions and contradictions are echoed inmodernity. K. searches, in vain, for an unifying principle that would foundthe authority of the Court and allow him to read and understand the Law.Perhaps by doing so he could judge his own relation to the Court and thequestion of his guilt. Perhaps by doing so he could comprehend his situation.K.’s efforts are frustrated and doomed, but he persists nonetheless. Readpolitically we can see our own condition in modernity reflected back to us inthis struggle. As Zygmunt Bauman has written, it is this search for anintegrated and coherent order that has come to be characteristic of one of thecentral tasks of modernity itself:

Among the multitude of impossible tasks that modernity set itself and thatmade modernity into what it is, the task of order (more precisely and mostimportantly, of order as a task) stands out — as the least possible among theimpossible and the least disposable among the indispensable; indeed, as thearchetype for all other tasks, one that renders all other tasks meremetaphors of itself (Bauman, 1991, 4).10

Thus, the initial claim here is that The Trial reflects certain aspects ofmodernity (and especially late modernity), the first of these being thatmodernity is especially concerned with the search for order. However, thisraises the question as to in what way modernity can be said to be especiallyconcerned with order; and in what way modernity can be said to address thatquestion. Indeed, the question of what modernity is is a pressing one as notonly are the origins and nature of modernity under dispute (Toulmin, 1992, 5;Connolly, 1993, 2; Wagner, 1994, 3), but in contemporary times we arealso faced with the question of whether we have ‘emerged’ from a modern to apost-modern condition (Lyotard, 1984; Bauman, 1987, 117–118; Habermas,1987, 1–5; Giddens, 1990, 1–4; Dupre, 1993, 250; Tester, 1993, 151ff.; Delanty,2000). While it is neither intended nor possible to explore these issues in full, wecannot simply elide these questions. Thus it would be useful to focus ourattention on the characteristics of modernity that speak most directly to thequestion in hand.

It is suggested here that the central feature of modernity is its specificresponse to the search for order; a search that modernity experiences especially


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acutely. To anticipate, modernity responds to this search through theinstitution of sovereignty. One standard way of characterizing modernity isto suggest that there is a shift from the traditional to the post-traditional, andsometimes from the religious to the secular. Giddens makes such claims,although his account is a nuanced one that attempts to avoid simplegeneralities (cf. Giddens (1990, 4–10) where trust and security becomes centralcategories, along with 1990, 100–111; see also Giddens, 1994, especially 91–95,100–104). These claims are certainly plausible, and there is some truth to them.However, they do not necessarily get to the heart of what is significant aboutmodernity. As has been demonstrated, both traditional and religious themespersist in modernity (Dupre, 1993, 5–10; Toulmin, 1992, 12; Delanty, 2000, 2,32–42; and something of which Giddens is well aware 1994, 56, 91ff.). What iscrucial to understanding and characterizing the shift to the modern from whatpreceded it is the location and nature of authorship in its widest sense; inpolitics this shift fractures in what has been called a legitimation crisis(Connolly, 1984, 1–19; Schaar, 1984, 106; Bauman, 1987, 126; Strauss, 1989,82; Wagner, 1994, 18, 176). What we see in modernity, then, is not a simpleshift in phenomena (the sacred to secular, faith to reason, tradition to post-tradition, community to individuality) but a shift in the source of thosephenomena: the basis for the authorship of order itself, and a new kind ofpolitical subject.

We can summarize this story (the shift in the locus of authorship and itsattendant crisis) as the story of modernity itself. Before modernity God wasboth author and authority. The role of humans was to read-off that orderthrough reason and revelation. In doing so, humans were able to access bothmeaning and order. Indeed, the two were interwoven and underpinned by theauthority of God Himself. A person was the creation of God, and theirpurpose was to find their location within this God-given order. This search,however, is subject to differing attempts and in modern times Europeans beganto detect plurality in God’s order. Now the order of the world becomes lesscertain, and the ability of human capacities to discern that order is realized tobe limited, a forerunner to doubt and scepticism. Thus there was arepositioning of the person in relation to God (Connolly, 1993, 21; Dupre,1993, 3; Wagner, 1994, 175). Now the order of the world becomes increasinglycontingent on man’s limited ability to discern unity behind variety. Faced withreligious strife, economic stagnation, competing claims of authority, and thelimited and increasingly uncertain nature of human knowledge, a new socialand ideational order was emerging (Hobsbawn, 1954a, b; Stone, 1967;Hampson, 1968, 31–40; McClelland, 1996, 171–190, 277–294). And in thisnew order there would have to be bonds between persons; moreover, the unityrequired must be of such a nature that all men could freely subscribe to it (cf.Strauss, 1989, 83–84; Toulmin, 1992, 25, 29, 55, 71, 97). These considerations,


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then, form the framework both for the formation of the modern subject, and inwhich that subject must navigate. This is not to say that subjectivity did notand could not exist before modernity, but it is to claim that the modern subjectis balanced in a different way to the pre-modern. What the subjects ofmodernity demanded was the authorship of a legitimate order. Now theycharged themselves with this task, only half-aware that they did not have theresources to fulfil it.

In modernity, then, it was incumbent on the subject to shape and mouldtheir own world, a responsibility that both set the scene for great freedom andgreat anxiety. The inescapable fate of the subject was to author; but were theyyet an authority? It is the experience of this giddying spectacle that stands atthe heart of modernity, and it underlies much of the sense of meaninglessnessand anxiety that has come to characterize both modernity and is especiallyself-conscious in late-modernity (Wolin, 1984, 84; Schaar, 1984, 106, 112–117;Cascardi, 1992, 189; Dupre, 1993, 114). In modernity the desire for order hasbeen experienced as a crisis (Lyotard, 1984, 6–9, 37–41). The latestintensification of this crisis can be identified as emerging in the 1800s throughthinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Sorel, and Freud, andcontinuing to present times. What had previously animated modernity, thebelief in both rationality and progress, and the hope of the possibility of aprocedural ordering of human affairs, the possibility of the person as author,has turned out to have an unreformed and corrupting dark-side — a dark-sidewhich, in the realm of the philosophical, political, and social, threatenedentropy, nihilism, and the breakdown of order itself. In Steiner’s words, ‘thegreat ennui’ set in. The optimism that ‘history itself was passing into a newstate of being, [and] that ancient times was at an end’ were washed away by anendemic disillusionment coupled with anxiety (Steiner, 1971, 21).11

In more recent thought this need to create order, or at least for order to exist,is also a guiding thread. It is exemplified most potently by Schmitt (1985,1996). However, it is also manifest in Camus’ notion of the ‘absurd’ where the‘appetite for the absolute and for unity [meets] the impossibility of reducingthis world to a rational and reasonable principle’ (Camus, 1975, 22–23, 51),and Arendt’s desire for a reinvention of the political which is not based on theimpossible dream of ‘contemplation’ (Arendt, 1998, 12–21). With increasedsuspicion of the modern project we have also witnessed some contemporarymanifestations of this concern. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre engages withthe consequences of the fragmentation of modernity and the EnlightenmentProject in his After Virtue. While his response does not abandon the dream ofthe ‘whole’ person, there is still a clear problem with the philosophy, ethics, andpolitics of modernity (MacIntyre, 1984, 204–225).12

If we consider Joseph K.’s plight in this light The Trial can also be a cause toreflect on our understanding of our own political condition, especially as we


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experience it in modern and especially contemporary times. Kafka’s technique isto force us to reflect upon ourselves by making what is usual to us seem unusual,surreal, and even contrived (Camus, 1973, 147; Bennett, 1991, 74). In consideringK.’s desperate attempts to ground his own experience, and to bring order to hisworld, we are also led to consider our own attempts to ground our ownexperience. And just as we might consider Joseph K.’s attempts toachieve order and resolution as being hopelessly (even tragically) misguided,perhaps we might also be drawn to reflect on our own experience. Viewed withthis in mind, The Trial can be understood as reflecting three strands of ourmodern inheritance. The first is the desire, indeed need, for order (especiallythrough rules and principles that can be recognized by all). In moderntimes this is connected to a search for meaning. The second is the belief thatnot only do such principles exist, but that we are capable of establishing ordiscerning them; and especially through the exercise of reason and will. Third, weare brought to consider that in modernity these two strands are woven around theidea and centrality of sovereignty. This sovereignty can be understood as a bannerfor the triad justice–law–power which it brings together, mediates, and represents.

Thus the character of Joseph K. and the experience of The Trial reflect avariety of aspects of the condition of political modernity and the forms ofpolitical subjectivity operative there. There is a strong link to be made betweenJoseph K.’s search for a reading or knowledge of the Law and our own searchfor a text which would bring order and meaning to our existence (Gossvogel,1987, 97). In this respect, The Trial is especially pertinent to our concerns.While it enables us to reflect on our wider theme of the human desire and needfor order, it also allows us to connect or locate that desire with the political.Specifically, what Joseph K.’s experiences at the hands of the Court expose arethe intimate relations between justice, law, and power. And just as Joseph K.has a perplexing experience of locating the Court, and balancing his search forjustice, his desire to read and ‘fix’ the Law, and his experience of, andsubjectivity to power, so too do we share similar frustrations in ‘sovereignty’.13

Sovereignty as the Banner for justice–law–power

In the previous section, a political reading of The Trial was offered: A readingthat asks us to reflect on concerns about the integrity of order in modernity,and in particular questions about the authorship of such an order. In whatfollows the question of sovereignty as a source of Law will be explored morefully. We can relate K.’s quest to read and have knowledge of the Law (a questthat is to prove futile) to our own experiences of the thought of sovereignty asthe banner for justice–law–power in modernity. Like K., we experience aradical disorientation in the face of this; just as K. seeks a Law that exists


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outside of those who communicate and interpret the law, we too seek toground sovereignty (and thus order) beyond itself.

In modern times the ‘sovereign’ has come to occupy the ground as the‘master-signifier’ of order itself: sovereignty is inescapably linked to modernity(cf. Edkins and Pin-Fat, 1999; Foucault, 1984; Neal, 2004, 391–397). In theperson, institution, and thought of the sovereign the order of modernity is bothrepresented and guaranteed. In modernity sovereignty brings together thethreads of justice–law–power in balance. Historically, this was achieved firstwith the support of a religious framework, and later in purely secular terms.What the politics of modernity has engaged with is the vision of the justpolitical community, and the dream of a ‘healed’ humanity: a healed humanitythe fragments of which political theorists have nursed in their dreams oflegislating and authoring a coherent order. Prominent amongst the trajectoryof this hope are the projects of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. In theprojects of these thinkers, justice, law, and power are presented so as to cohereinto order. And the coherence of this order is readable by its author: themodern subject. This subject is understood as an interplay between will andreason, and the sovereign and Law as the manifestation of this. Towards thebeginning of this ‘modern project’ there is an assimilation of what was tobecome later seemingly distinct: the sacred and the secular. However, in theface of uncertainty and the turn towards reason and will as sources ofauthorship, increasingly the thought and history of modernity is a story of theapparent separation of the political from the religious — although it mightmore accurately be described as the ‘suspension’ of the sacred as not only istheory replete with religious imagery, and not only do the religious foundationsof the political live on, but the very thinking of the political itself is religious.We do not register surprise when, at the beginning of this tradition, Hobbesdescribes his sovereign as ‘that Mortall God ’ (Hobbes, 1968, 227) — andneither should it cause astonishment to hear Schmitt echoing these foundationsthree hundred years later when he writes that ‘All significant concepts of themodern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts’ (Schmitt, 1985,36; 1996, 42).14

With the increasing doubt about the religious basis of authority and theattendant concerns for the prospects of order, authorship in modernity mustspring from elsewhere. It is here that the idea of the sovereign as the author ofthe Law takes on particular resonance. For just as K. finds (or fails to find) theabsent author of the Law, and just as K. also resists both the interpretation ofthe corrupt and visceral judges and advocates on the one hand (Kafka, 1999,60–61, 204ff.), and the almost metaphysical oscillations and ambiguities of thePriest on the other (Kafka, 1999, 237–243), so we too face an unmasking of thesovereignty of the Law in our times. The Law, as the product of sovereignty,relies on both the physical implementation of force and the idea of force, and


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on metaphysical underpinnings; it relies on a tension between power andjustice. Additionally, as a response to the need for order in a situation ofdeclining authority, we can say that sovereignty is radically over-determinedand not ‘fastened’ in modernity. Sovereignty guarantees the Law, but only doesso because of the multiple practices and residues that it trades on, and theability for multiple subjects to affirm it through reason and will. In sovereigntythe modern subject authors their own order and their own subjectivity.Sovereignty, insofar as it concerns the authorship of order represented in thework of the Law, has a direct connection to the practices of readingand writing.

What we see in modernity is the adoption of the order of sovereignty, but anorder which is deeply flawed. While sovereignty is seen as the fixing point ofthe order, bringing together the triad of justice–law–power, it fails to stabilizethis relation and its direction on a single axis. This failure leads to a fracture insovereignty; a fracture that is also a fracture in order itself as sovereignty is therepresentation of order in modernity. With the loss of religious authority as afoundation of order and authorship, the response to the task of order has beena concern not with sovereignty per se but increasingly with a secular form ofsovereignty (or at least a form of sovereignty that was open to the exercise ofwill and reason).

The object of the thought of sovereignty in modernity has been to establish aform of order that rests upon an increasingly secularized reason and will.However, the secular’s potential to authorize — that it is the secular’s potentialto be the author of order — is not unitary. The secular authorship can beconsidered to manifest in two opposing ways. The secular form of sovereigntyis caught in an irresolvable bind. On the one hand, secular sovereignty claimsto authorize, but its own authorization is also brought into question. This formof authorization betrays secular sovereignty’s relationship with religioussovereignty (or the sovereignty of the divine). Divine sovereignty takes theform that while capable of authoring and authorizing it is not in need of eitherauthorship or authorization. It is a power that can author the cosmos anddetermine the role of the person within it; and it is a power that can provide thetools necessary for its own apprehension (in the human revelation and reason).However, although divine authority is revealed by reason to be an end-in-itself,it is not dependent on this discovery for its authorization. There is no way tomove behind this divine authorship, and no way to undermine its authority.Thus, the response to divine sovereignty is that of faith. The obedience shownto such sovereignty is not obedience to Law, but the obedience to Law asauthorship. Indeed, this divine Law can be both re-authored and ‘suspended’without contradiction. The Law of the modern sovereign inherits these traits,but has no right to continue to use and inscribe with them. It is the inheritanceof an ancestor that modern sovereignty has disowned: a title and hierarchy that


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modern sovereignty still performs, even though this sovereignty has disownedthe claim to the title.

However, the secular form of sovereignty, although (historically) emergingfrom the religious form, must (necessarily) only bear a resemblance to theoriginal religious form. It does so because, as indicated, it must negotiate itsown foundations. It is caught between other forms or sources of ‘sovereignty’which it attempts to either subsume or suppress. It seeks to suppress theseforms of sovereignty as while they exist alternative Laws (or orders) arepossible. On the one hand, its claim to rest on the ability to exercise power isconstantly threatened by the manifestation of another power, which bothchallenges the claims of secular sovereignty to maintain its power — and thesechallenges also undermine the very basis of the ‘foundations’ of secularsovereignty, which is revelled to be in constant flux or dispute. On the otherhand, secular sovereignty must compete against the power of reason, whichmanifests as a critique of sovereignty. Thus, rather than simply being theassertion of secular force, sovereignty seeks legitimacy in the claim that it isauthorized by reason (and in doing so, recognizes the claims of sovereignty,and the force of reason). While this off-sets the countervailing powers thatthreaten to destabilize secular sovereignty, it also (fundamentally) underminesthe claims of secular sovereign power to be sovereign precisely because it issubject to the sovereign critique of reason.

What this crisis in the foundation of secular sovereignty reveals is a tensionbetween its three component parts: justice, law, and power. The Law is relatedto both justice and power. Indeed, it is the product of the two; or, morecorrectly, an intervention in their relationship. The three terms stand intripartite relation over the modern subject — a subjectivity that is related to,and formed by, these three tropes. Modern subjectivity is caught, created, andfashioned in a circle of seeking and responding to these tropes — a motion thatensnares the modern subject, and develops that subject in time. Law is manifestas calculation and rule. It is an approximation of justice, and an acknowl-edgement of power. Thus, Derrida has a point when he writes ‘Law (droit) isnot justice. Law is the element of calculation, and it is just that there be no law,but justice is incalculable; and aporetic experiences are the experiences, asimprobable as they are necessary, of justice, that is to say of moments in whichthe decision between just and unjust is never insured by a rule’ (Derrida, 1992b,16; 1999, 281, 284).

In The Trial we see just such a concern with the calculating subject of Law:both in the responses of the examining magistrates, and in the person andprofession of K. himself (he has both a categorizing and calculating mind; andhe works for a bank!). However, in the account offered by Derrida we are onlypresented with half of the story. Indeed, Derrida tends to overlook therelationship between justice and force: he does not consider justice as a form of


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force; nor does he consider the distinctions both in language and in levels ofapproval between force, violence, obligation, compulsion, and other ‘related’terms. Justice must be considered a fundamental and inescapable form of force.Justice (as force) is distinct from violence (as force). Justice attracts and coheresrather than repelling and dividing. Indeed, justice is the remedy to violence.Force does respond to force; but the qualities of justice and violence as forceare by no means equivalent. Justice as force seeks to recognize the realities andlimitations of our being with others: violence seeks to close down thiscommonality in difference. In this sense, legislating that is motivated by, andseeks to, establish justice can be seen as a force against force — but notnecessarily a violence against violence.

The arrest of Joseph K. remains, however, an example of one suchexperience of Derridian aporia. Revealed to him in the form of his arrest is theimpassable (and impossible) contradiction between the triad justice–law–power. The form of the arrest is what is crucial here. Both in the initial scene inK.’s bedroom, and in all the subsequent ‘action’, K. is not subject to physicalforce (except at the end), but is ensnared in his response to, and pursuit of,language (Kafka, 1999, Chap. 1). The end of the story sees violence emergewhere language ends (Kafka, 1999, Chap. 10, esp. 250–251). K. is arrestedthrough language. He is placed ‘under arrest’ only through the words of the‘officer’ but (and what must strike us, like K., as being peculiar about thisarrest) is that K. is still free to move as he wishes (Goebel, 2002, 47–48). Theform of the arrest is such that it is invoked by language — and it is the pursuitof language and the knowledge of language what characterizes much of thedynamics of the plot. Thus, K. enquires as to the content of the charge — towhich he is told that the official is not authorized to tell him. Yet despite notknowing with what he is charged K. still continues to protest his innocence(Kafka, 1999, 13). At one point K. considers writing a defence studying everydetail of his life against the unread Law (Kafka, 1999, 126). The aporeticnature of this situation should not be lost on us. While being considered guiltyK. protests that he is not — and yet, K. cannot protest that he is innocent,because he does not know that of which he is innocent.

In this light, Joseph K.’s attempts to understand and participate in his trial— and especially his attempts to read the Law — bring him before the Law inthree related ways.15 First, Joseph K. is attempting to place himself before theLaw, in other words, to present himself before the Law in the sense ofparticipating in and conducting his trial. In this respect, K. activates thechannels of the Law (such as the Advocate, Titorelli, and even the Priest) inorder to come into contact with the Law. From our current perspective, we canview K. as approaching the representatives of the law, or order, to get to theLaw or Order itself. This strategy is not entirely unreasonable. If K. couldaccess the Law (i.e. read order), he could understand the values and the


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judgement against him. The trouble with this approach is that these strategiesare doomed to failure. They are doomed because Joseph K. assumes that thereis a Law of which the Court and its officials are manifestations. K. does notstop to consider the possibility that the manifestations of the Law are the Law.Thus, K. is not bound by a Law that he cannot read (especially as it is notwritten), but a Law that he fails to read because it misdirects his attention. TheLaw is the interpretation offered and perpetually reformulated by the judgesand officers of the Court (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986, 47–49). It is K.’shopeless search for anything else which generates anxiety.

There are, however, two further ways in which K. can be understood to be‘before the Law’. These two understandings of being ‘before’ the Law lead usto reflect on both the subjectivity of K. and the constitution of the Law. As wehave previously noted, although he does not know the exact nature of thecharge against him, Joseph K. protests and maintains his innocence. This isplayed out throughout the story, and it is especially seen when Joseph K.refuses to accept the possible verdicts of the Court outlined by Titorelli — or,more precisely, the strategies that he might follow to avoid the verdict of guilty(Kafka, 1999, 169ff.). These strategies all involve remaining within the Law–justice would find him guilty. This is necessarily so as, without the inexactcalculation of the Law, K. would be exposed to ‘pure’ justice. In the light ofjustice (unmediated through Law), we must always consider ourselves guilty aswe could not hope to meet the demands placed on us by our condition and byour relations with others. K.’s strategy then is to pursue the line that he isinnocent. Initially this is pursued by attempting to hear the charge against him,and to demonstrate his innocence in terms of an error of the Court,increasingly K. comes to understand his innocence not in the legal terms ofthe Court, but by an understanding of the Court itself as being corrupt andillegitimate (Minkkinen, 1994, 353). Increasingly, the actions and strategies ofJoseph K. come to reveal the hidden points of the triad justice–law–power thatwe have previously outlined. What we see in K.’s response to his arrest andtrial is the emergence of a paradoxical situation. K. cannot accept that thecourt or its officials represent the Law, and yet these officials are K.’s onlyaccess to the Law. And it is only through the Law that we can hope to accessjustice. While K. views the Court as corrupt (and potentially corrupting), heacts as if he has no alternative but to engage with the Court. The Law ispermanently absent, although its officials seem to be ubiquitous. Thesubjectivity of Joseph K. is formed through the justice–law–power triad,manifest in K.’s denial that the Court holds a monopoly on the points of thistriad. In this way, K. employs his own sense of justice against the alliance oflaw–power, and, in doing so, appears before the Law manifest as an object ofresistance through justice. This relationship remains an ambiguous one asalthough the Court is ‘attracted to the guilty’ it is Joseph K. who ‘seeks’ and


22


pursues the Law (Kafka, 1999, 12, 232). Thus, in The Trial we see Joseph K.become increasingly snared within the spider’s web of the Court not throughthe actions of the Court or its officials as such, but because of his owndesperate machinations, responses to, and interpretations of, the Court (cf.Adorno, 1967, 270). Indeed, we could say that just as we are told that the Courtis attracted to the ‘guilty’ K., so too it is K.’s ‘guilt’ which attracts K. to theCourt. Indeed, in some sense K. constitutes his own guilt before the Court inmuch the same way that citizens of revolutionary regimes constitute their ownguilt before that regime: they are guilty before the possibility of an absolutejustice which they seek for themselves and others but cannot realize (Camus,1971, 153, 208–211). K. is guilty when viewed in the light of the infinitedemands of justice and so he seeks the Law to mitigate these claims and tobring order to the interplay between justice and power.

The final way in which Joseph K. is before the Law also brings us back to thetriad we outlined earlier. In seeking the Law, Joseph K. is also (inevitably)seeking the source of authority in the Law itself. As we have previouslymentioned, Joseph K. fails to recognize that the authority of the Law restsupon the interpretation of the Law itself and that interpretation rests onhuman action and responsibility. Thus, the authority invested in the Law is theauthority declared by the power of decision. That there is no ‘Law’, and yetLaw is necessary for the mediation of justice and power, is not simply JosephK.’s dilemma, but the curious fate of modern political subjectivity itself.Nowhere is this made more apparent than both at the start of this tradition(e.g., Hobbes) and echoed with vehement force in Hobbes’ 20th centurychampion, Carl Schmitt. Both of these thinkers seek to get what is behind theLaw and both are taken back to the creative authority of de facto power whichtranscribes the law. The question here is what motivates such a power totranscribe the law. Is it that (ultimately) power is motivated by a sense ofjustice as surely Derrida drawing on Montaigne must conclude (Derrida,1992b, 12)?16 Or is it that power is simply motivated by power (as Nietzschewould have us believe)?17 Whichever way we turn, or whichever way we arepulled, we (like K.) seek refuge in the Law.

Conclusion

‘It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it asnecessary.’ [said the Priest]. ‘A melancholy conclusion,’ said K. ‘It turnslying into a universal principle.’

The discussion developed here has used the struggle of Joseph K. in The Trialas a point of departure into in the question of the relationship between power,


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law, and justice in modernity. In particular, The Trial has been used to reflectback upon the centrality of these themes as mediated through sovereignty. Inmany ways K.’s plight in The Trial reflects what Foucault identifies as the‘extremities’ of power where we can witness the effects of power on those whoare subject to it (Foucault et al., 2003, 27–28). Moreover, the plight of K. isillustrative of the complexity of power both to create the subject and to beexercised by the subject (Foucault et al., 2003, 29). After all, it should notbe forgotten that K. both resists and aligns himself with the Court, and as muchas he is the subject of power (he is identified as an accused man) he is also anexerciser of power (he acquiesces in his identification as being an accused man).However, what The Trial also creates is an awareness that, in modernity, poweras violence is intimately bound to both law and justice. Just as power can be thesource of violence, law and justice also share this ambiguous inheritance. Thisdilemma raises the question as to what stands before the Law: on whatfoundations does the Law stand — and what stands before it as subject?

What The Trial suggests is that while the Law might well be considered to be‘stable’, in fact it is revealed to be both absent and mutable. K.’s quest for theLaw reveals nothing but talk about the Law. What is a stable and an unyieldingconstant is the desire to know the Law. Moreover, the problem is not oneof the unstable foundations of the Law, which (in its application) constantlybring the legitimacy of the Law into question, but that the impulse to justiceforces such foundations in the Law, despite itself. Justice and force are found tobe complicit in the foundation of the Law — but Law is also found to disruptboth. Thus, it is true that ‘Everyone strives to attain the Law’ as law is themediator of justice and power (Kafka, 1999, 236–237). Both are realities —neither can be avoided — but they can be balanced. Justice without power isineffective and not in force; power without justice is unregulated, meaningless,and inhuman. Indeed, it has been suggested here that not all force is violence.The force of justice — which we must draw towards, and compels us to act —is opposed to the force of violence in the same way that value is opposed tomeaninglessness, order to nihilism, and hope to despair. The force of justice isto allow us to attempt to be what we are as human beings who share a fate withothers: the force of violence is to attempt to close this relation in solipsism.

However, we must bear in mind that the Law is only an approximation ofjustice — and necessarily so. The Law can never be justice itself. There isalways a space between Law and justice; the two cannot, and should not,collapse into each other; neither should one replace the other. Law withoutjustice is an incomplete and unmotivated structure of command. Justicewithout Law is the reign of totality: its demands are innumerable, incalculable,and impossible. Justice, while the motivation for action, in its unfettered statewould be the end of politics. The Law is never totally just, and the law alwaysrequires motivation. Without the space created by the difference between Law


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and justice, we would be neither motivated nor free. Conversely, the Law isnecessary not simply because it is necessary to have order, but because only theLaw can manifest between the dictates of justice and/as the monopoly of force.And so, Law without justice, is the mere calculation of force and the regulationof violence. As such, it appears to be, but is not, entirely political. While forcecan produce order, it cannot produce value. Both order and value are necessaryto an account of the political: and so both Law and force must have a referenceto justice, as is it justice itself which aids the generation of values, withoutwhich there can be no legislation of order. And yet, the circle closes in uponitself as without force justice is inoperative: in the (final) analysis justice, whilemotivating or urging action is not, and cannot be, action. The Law is themanifestation of these two points: related to both, but belonging entirely toneither, it is a subject and exile to both.

The Law, then, is necessary not simply because it produces pragmatic effects(that is to say, it is not necessary simply because we could not achieve othergoals without it). It is necessary as both a response to justice and force (on theone hand), and our desire for value and order (on the other). Law remains thenecessary act of being human as it is the act of legislation. Law, then, is politics— and not merely in a trivial sense. Law is politics as the act of legislation —an act that exists between and in response to both justice and power and an actwhich authors and authorizes the order of modernity. As the Priest commentsafter the parable ‘Before the Law’, we do not have to accept the Law as beingtrue, merely necessary. K. dismisses this conclusion, preferring instead a Lawwhich is both just and complete or to show that the Law is mere illusion, deceit,and corruption (Kafka, 1999, 243). It is our fate, like the fate of Joseph K. topermanently struggle in the order which is necessitated, but undermined, bythese extremes.

Date submitted: 7 September 2006Date accepted: 29 December 2006

Notes

1 I acknowledge my gratitude to those who have commented on this article in its various stages,

and who have encouraged me throughout its development. Prominent among these are the

members of the Politics, Action, and Value Reading Circle in the Department of Politics and

International Relations at Lancaster University where some of the ideas for this article were first

formed, and to audience members when earlier versions of this paper were presented at

Nottingham University and BISA (December 2006). I am especially grateful for the detailed

comments of Patrick Bishop, Tony Burns, Christopher May, Adam David Morton, and Andrew

W. Neal. I also acknowledge the comments made by the anonymous referees of this piece whose

observations have helped me to strengthen the argument in important respects. I remain

culpable for the errors that linger.


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2 The argument cited here builds upon Derrida’s thought of ‘the centre’ as presented in Writing

and Difference. In this way, the rupture of Modernity itself is associated with the displacement of

centre; and Derrida’s point is that this location of centre is unstable, but unavoidable. As

Derrida writes, ‘And even today the notion of a structure lacking any centre represents the

unthinkable itself ’ (Derrida and Bass, 1978, 279).

3 For a discussion of the dangers of doing this see Posner (1988, 186).

4 As might be expected there is a huge literature relating to the interpretation of Kafka. From our

present perspective, two strands of that literature are especially pertinent. The first strand deals

with the problems in approaching Kafka’s texts. For useful discussions please consult Adorno

(1967, 246), Bennett (1991, 73), Constantine (2002, 19), Wood (2003, 43). The second strand

concerns those authors who defend a ‘religious’ approach to Kafka. For illustrations of such

authors please consult Winkler who takes the view that Kafka’s work is akin to that of

Kierkegaard (Winkler, 1973, 45–46). Dyson agrees that Kafka raises basic religious problems,

and that he provokes a consciousness of man cut-off from his true life (Muir, 1973, 33–34;

Winkler, 1973, 46; Dyson, 1987, 57–72). It is argued here that while the religious reading is

dominant it does not exclude the possibility of a political reading.

5 This is a theme that is also explored in Lyotard and Thebaud (1985), Derrida (1992a) and

Derrida et al. (1992). This is also touched upon (from a Lacanian perspective) in (Zizek (1997).

6 For example, J.P. Stern and Theodor W. Adorno have found The Trial to be an expression of a

‘negative ontology’ and ‘anxiety’ found in National socialism and our own times (Adorno, 1967,

259ff.; Stern, 1976, 22–42). Here Adorno (following Bemjamin) views Kafka’s work as a

response to unlimited power. Others, such as Jane Bennett have argued that Kafka’s novels

‘interrogate the dream of responsible agency’ (Bennett, 1991, 73–95, especially p. 80). David

Bruce Suchoff provides an informative discussion of the idea of ‘boundaries’ in Kafka, linking

the novels to a ‘politics of identity’ (Suchoff, 1994, 55–56, 145). Interestingly, political

approaches to Kafka’s work have also been developed by those working within the former

Soviet Union. For examples of Marxist approaches to Kafka consult (Hughes, 1981) especially

the essays by Hajek, Suchkov, Knipovich, and Zatonsky. As has been noted, Kafka presents an

ambiguous legacy for the Marxist mind: the question as to whether he acquiesces in, or

transcends, his bourgeois confines is the kernel of this ambiguity (cf. Posner, 1988, 180). Thus

we find that while Hajek argues that in Kafka’s works loneliness is ‘the greatest evil against

which man vainly struggles’ in the quest for self-determination through work and live (Hajek,

1981, 115–119) others, such as Knipovick, conclude that ‘the majority of the people in Kafka’s

novels and novellas are ‘‘simply slaves’’, suffering, humiliated, taking their degradation as the

norm’ and that, at best, Kafka’s acquiescence in this serves as ‘another material witness for the

crimes of capitalism against human culture’ (Knipovich, 1981, 205). Finally, Delueze and

Guattari see in Kafka’s work a ‘study of regimes, their differences, and transformations’ (Dana

Polan in Deleuze and Guattari, 1986, xxv), and in particular they argue against ‘transcendent’

readings of Kafka which fail to recognize that ‘where one believed there was the law, there is in

fact desire and desire alone’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986, 49).

7 Cf. Cohen (1980, 213), Dworkin (1985, 152) and Wood (2003, 44).

8 However, it should be noted that at least one line of commentary takes a harder line than the

pluralistic view taken here. This is identified by Reda Bensmaıa’s ‘Foreword’ to Deleuze’s and

Guattari’s Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1986). Here it is argued that Deleuze and

Guattari are correct to follow Walter Benjamin in rejecting the mistaken interpretations offered

by the theological and psychological approaches in favour of ‘the political, ethical, and

ideological dimensions that run through his work’ (1986, ix).

9 For examples of ways in which K. strives after this elusive and impossible integration, please

consult Heller (1973, 105), Gossvogel (1987, 102), Minkkinen (1994, 350), Suchoff (1994, 145)

and Goebel (2002, 44–45).


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10 This view is reflected, although in a different way, in the work of Slavoj (Zizek in his work on

the fantasy that creates a ‘primordial form of narrative’ (Zizek, 1997, 7, 10).

11 In similar ways both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard also reflect this sense of loss and

hope: Nietzsche clinging to his aristocratic Ubermensch who will both break and create new

tables of Laws (Nietzsche, 1969); ‘Of Old and New Law-Tables’ (Nietzsche, 1996: Essay 2,

Section 2), and Kierkegaard who seeks to rescue an age devoid of passion and suffering from

levelling by a reinvigoration of the spiritual through relation with the alterity of God

(Kierkegaard, 1978).

12 Charles Taylor can also be understood to be addressing these concerns (Taylor, 1989). These

problems are charted and discussed in Poole (1991).

13 It is in this sense that we can view K.’s struggle as being a ‘case study’ in what Foucault has

called the ‘affects’ of power on those who are subject to it. Here Foucault’s point is that in order

to understand power we must resist trying to identify and focus on those who we believe to

‘wield’ or ‘have’ power, and look instead at the only discernable manifestation of power

(Bennett, 1991, 90; Foucault et al., 2003, 28).

14 For a wider discussion of this relationship, see Lefort (1988) and McClelland (1996).

15 Derrida uses this phrase as the title of his essay of 1992. What stands in need of comment

concerning this use is that Derrida takes the parable of the Priest as his ‘text’ for his discussion.

Of course, this is a permissible strategy, but what this sidelines is both the interpretation of the

text offered in the dialogue between Joseph K. and the Priest, and the position of the parable

within the action of the novel itself. Here we might contrast Derrida’s approach with that

strategy of Adorno who comments that ‘The fact that Leni’s fingers are connected by a web, or

that the executioners resemble tenors, is more important than the Excursus on the law’ (Adorno,

1967, 248).

16 However, Derrida is also aware that this authority in creating Law can be seen as an act of

violence (p.14). What is important here is that justice precedes the violence which precedes Law.

17 Indeed, Nietzsche considers Law not only to be a simple manifestation of power (and that any

sense of justice follows only from the establishment of Law — a point on which Hobbes would

agree), but Nietzsche goes further suggesting that ‘legal conditions may be nothing more than

exceptional states of emergency, partial restrictions which the will to life in its quest for power

provisionally imposes on itself in order to serve its overall goal: the creation of larger units of

power.’ (Nietzsche, 1996: Essay 2, Section 13).

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