[XI, 26, 25] CENT’ANNI DI KAFKAONE HUNDRED YEARS OF KAFKA

Drawing on the reflections of Blanchot, Derrida and Butler, I aim to address a pivotal issue of Kafka’s life and works: the law, which is the forbidden, as we must not know what it is and whence it comes. It is in the practice of citation that the ground of authority is constituted as perpetual deferral. We cannot access the “before-the-law”; nevertheless, we are subjected to the law, which works through reiteration and exclusion alike. Since Kafka and his characters are excluded, they live in the mode of dying. They belong to exile, like Jews, whose identity is displaced, diasporic and without any particular homeland, like Israel. Kafka knows, on the one hand, the cruelty of the law and its fictive character, and on the other, the risk of defying the law. Therefore, he seeks escape through writing, which puts him at the limit of the law, a position that is open to a kind of subversive juridicity.

KEYWORDS: law, the forbidden, reiteration, exile, subversive juridicity

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