Page 47 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
If to Kant and Milton the subjection and dehumanization of others is immorally impermissible, so is the temptation of absolute power that perverts Courts to exercise might.269 In this spirit, The Trial’s Court recalls the might of Job’s Leviathan. Leviathan’s spine not only symbolizes, but also embodies the Court’s interlocked attics of might. Each interlocked scale, mirroring each tightly sealed attic, prevents air to flow and to pass (41:8). Thus, asphyxia is K’s sickness unto nausea (T78). Just as Leviathan stirs the seas (41:23), the Court’s attics are rolling waves (T78). Just as “terror dances” on Leviathan’s face (41:14), fear and trembling tangoes in the defendants’ demeanour and gaze (T70). The power of the Court against the humility of defendants, Josef K cannot tolerate. Angrily, K reacts at their insecure and submissive demeanour. Far too apologetic, terrified defendants tremble to defend their rights, and to disturb the Court or Huld unnecessarily (T70, 78, 192).
Josef K looks at the entrails of a sick and all-mighty Court, its canine victims and its hounds, and plays a word crossing game with Job, from where does it come, this whirlwind, a hurricane? If like dogs defendants are treated in Leviathan’s attics and whirlwinds of nausea, like ants, Job’s children perish beneath the rubble as “a mighty wind comes [came] across the deserts” (1:19-20). If Yahweh’s whirlwind saves Job, the Judge’s symbolic legal whirlwind murders K (T231). Like a dog, in the night, Josef K is carried off like Satan’s whirlwind. “It will ... lift him up... and whirl him out of his place... without pity as he tries to flee from its power” (27:20-22). In this crisscrossed hurricane, impotent defendants are impeded to engage in and follow their processes, slowly drowning, in frustration, beneath the tragic divisible mask of progress. Impotently 3⁄4 they demand volatile Lady Justice to settle her scales, and this is not possible. Impotently 3⁄4 they demand vindication, and the just measure of their steps, and this is not possible. Impotently 3⁄4 they demand to see Him and be heard by Him, and this is not possible. Exhausted, they demand nullification, acquittal 3⁄4 a zero 3⁄4 and this is not possible. Only the vertebrae of Leviathan’s attics as infinity plus one, “¥ + 1,” is possible — the pitiless, impious + one, added to days, to sentences que no son sentencias, pero veredictos, to words, to existence to mercilessly annihilate it: tyranny’s fist in Josef K’s gravest trial and hour.
In the inscrutable hour, defendants, dehumanized by the Court’s absolute power, discern the absurd paradox.270 There are no acquittals, only crucifixions or amputations of the self. Absolute acquittals are not possible, and all other acquittals are persistent, immutable, abiding (T157-63). These paradoxes, nails, admit apparent acquittals as refutations of justice. They proclaim muteness, shadows, and a liminal existence: the accused is apparently free, but not; at times, the charge is apparently dropped, but perpetually hovers, and reinstatement is always in the nearing. Thus, an “apparently absolved” individual can suffer sudden arrests (T158-59). The absent Prosecutor, always eager to assault, may pounce from nowhere, somewhere, or everywhere (T158-61). The process becomes a dateless process of fatal uncertainty,271 of endless series of arrests regressing yet appearing to progress, or vice-versa. In the rift of being 3⁄4 infinitely opening, infinitely closing, infinitely returning (T157), the infinite returns as the infinitely continuous. There, “acquittal by protraction,” is another infamous cycle (T162). The accused, ever vigilant, ever alert, and never convicted is spared sudden arrests, but persecuted like a hunted beast (10:13-17; T158-61). At the infinite crisscross, the Judge and the Prosecutor are a mise en abyme of Yahweh and Satan. Here 3⁄4 Satan’s presence is revealed in The Trial’s omnipotent Court.
269 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure ofKings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 755
270 It is incomprehensible that trials, which by nature ought to flourish, be thrown off course, and taken out of the lawyers’ hands. In a travesty of Justice, legal counsel is unable to defend the accused, predict or follow trials diligently.
271 Block’s many insubstantial inquiries and petitions are as futile and worthless (T121) as Job’s negative confession and petition. The trial does not progress; in fact, it is impossible to ascertain a firm trial date (T177). The court’s corridors, its mock courtrooms, indeed, preach sophistries. Against these larger trials of one accused against the tyranny of the many, there are also an endless number of mini-trials against acquaintances, friends, inane guards, inspectors, a flogger, Fräulein, etc.
—47—