Page 46 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
When Josef K, unlike Job, refuses to be intimidated by the Court, he partakes in Kant and Milton’s refutations against domination and subjugation. He becomes, paradoxically, a most potent, yet impotent Court critic.256 “K articulatesthemostdamningcritiqueoftheorganizationanditsmethods.”257 TheCourtisimperfect,“evasiveand contradictory.”258 “The man from the country (in the Parable ‘Vor dem Gesetz’), contrary to what K is told, is not received when he comes, indeed the Doorkeeper treats the Law as if it were not for the man, but for his own sake.”259 Indeed, although the priest refutes Josef K’s critique of the Parable of the Law, Josef K, says Dodd, persuades lectors with his counter argument, ‘Der Türhüter hat also den Mann getäuscht’ (T183). Josef K further crystalizes his critique into an aphoristic broadside: ‘Die Lüge wird zur Weltordnung gemacht’ (T188).260 Not only is the Court evasive and contradictory, but also its agents are also corrupt.261 The corrupt intermediaries 3⁄4 Warders, Huld, the Priest and Titorelli262 3⁄4 abuse their power. The corrupt warders eat K’s breakfast and plan to take his clothes, which recalls the crucifixion. Huld, the lawyer, tyrannizes Block in treating him like a dog. The Priest pronounces Josef K’s verdict without a right to a legitimate hearing (T213). Titorelli offers to use his Court contacts to apparently acquit Josef K (T148-49). They all arrogate powers to derogate others.
Because the tyrannizing of others is impermissible in Kant and Milton’s moral philosophies, Milton rages against magistrates that arrogate powers beyond themselves and their brothers. He repudiates how magistrates derogate their brothers to serve the tyrant’s glory, as if they were vermin under their feet.263 In Kafkabel 3⁄4 The Trial’s Court,264 the powerless defendants must submit. Derogated, they not only wag their tails like submissive puppies (T215-17), or are executed like a dog (T231), but defendants gladly subject to oppression. If a lawyer tells them to bark and crawl under the bed as in a kennel, they gladly obey (T74, 194-95). Kafkabel’s dehumanizing canine life, K surely detests. Former men turned shuddering, canine shades — non-selves — coerced to live in imaginary constructions, metamorphose into caricatures — simulations265 — aimlessly wandering through attic corridors crisscrossed with Job’s Sheol, dung heap, and Leviathan’s spine. Thus, living, yet dead, free and not free,266 imprisoned in the attics’ tempests, as if stirred by Yahweh’s Leviathan in Job, they are infinitely inferior 3⁄4 dogs, infinitely confused 3⁄4 spinning tops, infinitely distracted 3⁄4 flies, infinitely overwhelmed267 3⁄4 Wentelteefjes.268
256 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
257 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
258 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
259 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
260 The page numbers cited above correspond to Kafka, Franz. Der Prozeß. Roman, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. New York: Schocken Books, 1979. In
Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 34-35
261 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
262 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38
263 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.,
1957. 754-58
264 My neologism for the Court is Kafkabel. Just as Cain murders innocent Abel, the Court murders innocent K (to himself and to some scholars) or guilty
K (to others). Whether Josef K is innocent or guilty is a scholarly debate. It is peculiar that to Frau Grübach the arrest “seems like something scholarly...that she does not [I don’t] understand” (T23). Josef K, judges his arrest more harshly. “It is not scholarly at all, but nothing at all” (T23). This Kafkaesque paradox, another twilight, debates the priestly or scholarly approach to his arrest in contrast to its nothingness, as if out of nothingness, scholars and scribes, including Moses, had created the Laws, which Josef K, at the cathedral, renders as “universal lies” (T213). The neologism, Kafkabel, thus affirms Josef K’s posture that he is innocent. It implies the murder of the innocent in light of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony and The Trial. In both works, Kafka portrays innocent men. Josef K, at the Court of Inquiry, openly criticizes the Court’s senseless proceedings, its illicit arrests and the persecution of the innocent (T51).
265 Kierkegaard. From The Sickness Unto Death. Basic Writings of Existentialism. Ed. Gordon Marino. New York: The Modern Library, 2004. 42-105
266 (Job 9:27-29).
267 The law circumscribes their function; therefore, they know little about what follows. Given that defense lawyers are absent at the interview, the accused
are unable to protect themselves (T117). Moreover, court officials have no contact with commoners, and are often at a loss in complex cases.
268 Escher’s wentelteefje’s long armored body has six legs, humanoid feet, a parrot-like beak and eyes on stalks. They roll in through doors like a wheel and
unroll to crawl up or down the stairs, and wind up to roll out. Locher, J.L. The Magic of M. C. Escher. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. —46—