Agamben'S Joyful Kafka

Both Giorgio Agamben and Franz Kafka are best known for their gloomy political worldview. A cautious study of Agambens references on Kafka, however, reveals another dimension right at the intersection of their works: a complex and unorthodox theory of freedom. The inspiration emerges from Agambens claims that it is a very poor reading of Kafkas works that sees in them only a summation of the anguish of a guilty man before the inscrutable power. Virtually all of Kafkas stories leave us puzzled about what really happened. Was Josef K., who is butchered like a dog, defeated? And what about the meaningless but in his own way complete creature Odradek? Agambens work sheds new light on these questions and arrives, through Kafka, at different strategies for freedom at the point where this freedom is most blatantly violated.