Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Kafka's Hope
1. Strategies in Response to Law (1)
2. Strategies in Response to Law (2)
3. Strategies in Response to Bare Life
4. Strategies in Response to the 'Work of Man'
5. Strategies in Response to Activism
6. Strategies in Response to the Sacrality of Life
7. Strategies in Response to Language
8. Strategies in Response to Time (1)
9. Strategies in Response to Time (2)
Conclusion: Finding Freedom Beyond Subordination
Literature
Index
The first book to articulate the impact of Kafka on Agamben's thought
Anke Snoek is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, Australia.
Agamben’s Joyful Kafka is valuable both as a work of Agamben
scholarship and as a work of Kafka criticism: understanding just
how Agamben understands Kafka is extremely useful for finding and
opening the joy in Kafka’s work, and indispensable for coming to
grips with the misunderstandings that have marked Agamben’s. […]
Snoek’s erudite study makes an important contribution to Agambenian
philosophy. It also provides a unique and compelling literary and
philosophical study of those moments of reversal which, to quote
Benjamin slightly out of context, ‘. . . can make the incomplete
(happiness) complete, and the complete (pain) incomplete.’
*German Studies Review*
One of the greatest questions surrounding Giorgio Agamben’s work
today is how one might embody his complex conceptualizations of our
social and cultural realities. Snoek’s answer is quite simple:
Kafka’s perfectly blended surreal and yet all-too-human literary
universe delivers us the most profound and pronounced insights into
the highly theoretical work of Agamben. Moreover, as she ably
demonstrates, this affinity between Kafka and Agamben is not a
coincidence, but a combination of those particular elements central
to understanding both authors’ visions of our world. Snoek’s
in-depth analysis probes the darkest corners of modern life
alongside two authors whose commentary on such matters almost
singularly defines it.
*Colby Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology,
Loyola University Chicago, USA*
A richly rewarding—and much needed—study of the influence of Kafka
in Agamben’s work that casts new light on the provocative account
of political freedom that he develops.
*Catherine Mills, School of Philosophical, Historical and
International Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia*
“Anke Snoek’s book fills an existing lacuna in biopolitical theory.
Very little in the past generation came close to the explosion of
intellectual power that emanated from Benjamin’s reading of Kafka,
or in ours, to the way Giogrio Agamben reads both. Snoek’s
comprehensive analysis of these intersections supplies a careful
map of both moments for students of the present, and theory of
potentialities.”
*Nitzan Lebovic, The Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical
Values, Lehigh University, USA*
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