Philosophy and Kafka

Brendan Moran is currently research scholar at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, and Adjunct associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he has taught in the Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Humanities, and the Faculty of Arts. Under the anagrammatic “pseudonym,” Monad Rrenban, he has published Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy, a book on Walter Benjamin’s early writings. He has also published essays on Benjamin, Agamben, and Salomo Friedlaender, and is completing a book on Benjamin’s Kafkan politics.Carlo Salzani holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Verona (Italy) and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Monash University (Australia). He has published Crisi e possibilità: Robert Musil e il tramonto dell’Occidente (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), Constellations of Readings: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009) and co-edited Essays on Boredom and Modernity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). He has translated into Italian some of Slavoj Žižek’s books.

• IntroductionPart 1: Philosophical InvestigationsChapter 1: I Don’t Want to Know that I Know: The Inversion of Socratic Ignorance in the Knowledge of the DogsChapter 2: Kafka’s Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The TrialChapter 3: A Kafkan Sublime: Dark Poetics on the Kantian PhilosophyChapter 4: The Everyday’s Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and WittgensteinChapter 5: You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you: Communication and the Social Destruction of Subjectivity in Kafka’s MetamorphosisChapter 6: Kafka’s InsomniaPart 2: Philosophical TopicsChapter 7: Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and GarnettChapter 8: Kafka’s Political AnimalsChapter 9: The Calamity of the Rightless: Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka on Monsters and MembersChapter 10: Knowing Life Before the Law: Kafka, Kelsen, DerridaPart 3: Philosophical ReadingsChapter 11: Anxiety and Attention: Benjamin and OthersChapter 12: On the Mimesis of Reification: Adorno’s Critical Theoretical Interpretation of KafkaChapter 13: “In the Penal Colony” in the Philosophy of Gilles DeleuzeChapter 14: In a Messianic Gesture: Agamben’s Kafka IndexAbout the Contributors

Several readings are illuminating. ... Philosophy and Kafka contains many valuable insights. ... The illuminating moments of Philosophy and Kafka will reward curious fans of Kafka's work.