Page 74 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
tension within the infinitely divisible self:429 man as accused, yet also accusing; man as objectified,430 yet also objectifying;431 man as victim, yet also victimizing. Thus, man is condemned, as he condemns.432
To objectify is to crisscross both Wall and Siege Works, is to entangle liberty and oppression, innocence and guilt. Inside Job’s Wall, Satan objectifies Job (1:8). Inside Satan’s Siege Works, everyone objectifies Job. Inside Josef K’s Room, the Wardens objectify K (T4-5). Inside the Prosecutor’s Siege Works, everyone objectifies K. There is estrangement within Yahweh’s or the Judge’s Wall and within Satan’s or the Prosecutor’s Siege Works. Where Satan’s Whirlwind conjures chaos, Yahweh’s Whirlwind restores. Like ants, Job’s children perish beneath the rubble as “a mighty wind comes [came] across the deserts” (1:19-20). Satan, the implicit usurper of God’s Whirlwind, blows away the four corners of the house of Job’s children by mighty desert winds (1:19). Satan destroys with the Whirlwind and God restores in the Whirlwind. Antithesis and antithesis whirl. Satan and God are conjugated in the Whirlwind: one has dominion to dispossess and disorient in the temporal and finite, the other, to restore and orient in the atemporal and infinite. Satan of the Whirlwind disorients, hurls, whirls. At night, he carries the wicked off as they try to flee from its power (27:20-22) 3⁄4 Satan’s power. Satan is Guilt Whisper and Wicked Whirlwind and Yahweh, Innocent Whisper and Whirlwind Power.
Yahweh of the Whirlwind is also Yahweh of the Wasteland. He brings rain to a land uninhabited, where no one lives, where no man’s gaze will rest upon it, and He satisfies the desolate wasteland, making the dry ground bring forth grass (38:25-27). Yahweh, the God of the primeval desolate wasteland is the infinite mirror of Titorelli’s heath grass fields, of a holy ground, of innocence’s presence in the greening grass, the fresh herbage springing forth amidst the absence of beings, of Adam and Eve, of Satan whispering guilt (Gen; Job). God and Titorelli’s wastelands do not differ: one is the beginning of innocence, the other, the endings of guilt; one is the potentiality for guilt, the other, the potentiality for innocence. In one, the trees exist in potential, in the other, in actuality. God’s wasteland thus returns in Titorelli’s wasteland as the potential for Paradise on earth, for Christ’s word fulfilled, and beings as beings, to experience the immanent presence of innocence in the original and primordial metaphysical gift of Imago Dei before Satan devoured it.433
The quest of the tragic hero Josef K is to retrieve the presence of God in the likeness of God:434 the presence of metaphysical innocence in an immanent world 3⁄4 his genuine liberty in the very paradise regained he fondly glimpses at as he crosses towards death. In the glittering and trembling moonlight, the waters parts around a small island “upon which the foliage of trees and shrubbery rose in masses, as if crowded together... where many a
429 Kissowastedawaybytheprocess,thatheloseshistemperandtreatstheManufacturerdespotically(T133-34).
430 Sartre posits that an objectification process occurs among multiple participants, which he names ‘othering.’ In this ‘othering,’ everyone turns and gazes at each other as objects. This process is mutual. Both parties experienced alterity, that is, something strange and shameful. In this sense, Josef K and Job’s friends objectify Josef K and Job while, in turn, Josef K and Job respond to their objectification. Job’s Yahweh and Satan, and K’s mysterious slandered, too, objectify Job and K, respectively. Yahweh praises Job while Satan aims to test Job’s genuine religiosity or piety as posited in his insidious claim, “does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:6-12). The mysterious slanderer explicitly aims to injure Josef K (1). The Trial shows many instances of objectification. Countless mysterious spectators objectify many of its protagonists. Sartre. Being and Nothingness. “The Keyhole.” Tr. Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library, 1943. 402-03
431 The defendants, having mistaken appearance for reality, delight in opinions. Facial lines and lips doom with condemnation and guilt (T174-75; Job 2:10). Defendants, in Josef K’s facial lines and lips, cruelly read the very condemnation and guilt (T174-75) that Eliphaz also imputes to Job’s lips (Job 15:1-6), although Job never sinned with his lips (Job 2:10).
432 This exemplifies K’s despotism towards the Manufacturer (T133-34).
433 Kittel, Gerhard. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. II. “εἰκών.” See “Divine Likeness in ancient Judaism.” Ed. By Gerhard Gittel. Trans. By Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Michigan: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964. 392-96
434 Kittel, Gerhard. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. II. “εἰκών.” See “Divine Likeness in ancient Judaism.” Ed. By Gerhard Gittel. Trans. By Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Michigan: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964. 394
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