Freedom from the Free Will

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University, Australia. He has written and edited several books, including (with Andrew Benjamin) Sparks Will Fly: Benjamin and Heidegger, also published by SUNY Press.

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on Referencing Kafka’s WorksPreamble: Kafka’s Laughter1. Kafka’s Cages: Laughter and the Free WillPlots of Confinement and the Kafkaesque LaughterThe Separation of Freedom and Unfreedom: Augustine’s Invention of the Free WillFreedom From: Negative and Positive FreedomLaughter and Freedom: On Kafka’s Political TechniqueThe Cage and Its Relations: Laughter, Freedom, Ontology2. The Abrahamic Laughter: The Topography of Freedom in "The Judgment" and The Metamorphosis Abrahamic Laughter: Between the Theological and the PoliticalWho Is Gustav Blenkelt? The Two InterpretationsThe Transformation of the Ideal in "The Judgment": The Primacy of the Theologico-Political"The world of freedom" and Its Essential Fault: Blanchot’s KafkaThe Essential Transformation: Laughter in The Metamorphosis 3. The Return of the Body: The Ethics of LaughterEthical Freedom: Levinas’s Critique of the Free WillEthical Laughter: The Nature Theater of OklahomaRegaining the Power to Say "One": "A Report to an Academy"The Other’s Laughter: "A Hunger Artist""The fall is the proof of our freedom"4. The Law of Freedom: Reading The Trial through SpinozaA Cage without Walls: Kafka and BiopoliticsSpinoza’s Ethical Laughter: The Empty Law of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Empty Law without Truth: The Priest’s Discourse and Existential TormentThe Laughter of Truth: Josef K.’s HesitationAgamben’s Antinomianism: The Biopolitical Return of Theology5. Executing Violence: The Drama of Power in "In the Penal Colony"Two Executions: The Spectacle of PowerThe Death Penalty and SovereigntyThe Tragedy of Modern Sovereignty and the Existential Drama of BiopoliticsThe Economy of Substitution: Death and the Free WillGeneralized Violence as Ontology: Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden The Theater of Laughter: Secondary Characters Center Stage!Toward an Ontology of Laughter: An Agonistic Economy of FreedomPostscript: A Triple or a Single Will?NotesBibliographyIndex

"...very highly recommended." — Midwest Book Review"Vardoulakis's original new book contributes to the fields of Kafka studies, political theory, and contemporary European philosophy by forcefully realigning our understanding of the problem of freedom and the free will as it traverses Kafka's literary texts. Its greatest strength lies in its careful and rigorous exposition of the refractory concepts of freedom that circulate through Kafka's most canonical works." — Gerhard Richter, author of Inheriting Walter Benjamin"Freedom from the Free Will is at the forefront of a vibrant new development in Kafka studies that, without succumbing to old debates about Kafka's supposed 'religiosity,' rigorously works out the philosophical undercurrents and theoretical consequences of his literary practices. The laughing, playful Kafka encountered in Vardoulakis's book creates concepts of freedom that cannot be found elsewhere." — Peter Fenves, author of The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time