Almost the Same but not Quite: Kafka and His ‘Assignees’
Almost the Same but not Quite: Kafka and His ‘Assignees’

Summary/Abstract: Kafka never tired of pointing out how much modern society animalizes its inhabitants, imprisoning them within their individual cages. Nevertheless, many among his figures, banished into the darkness of their self-enclosure, discover that which escapes this society’s daylight. Attaching to this forgotten truth by way of its evocation, exploration, and subversive mimicry, they emancipate themselves from the pressure of historical law. Unlike these figures who, riveted to their confined places, try to remedy their predicament, Kafka places his author completely ‘above the fray’, in a ‘posthumous shelter’ that enables him to deal with the suppressed truth in a more calculated, strategic way. While he entangles them with one another, he takes care to distance himself from their tightly connected histories.

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