THE TRIAL OF KAFKA'S LAW: A FRAMEWORK OF CONTEMPORARY APPARATUSES

Abstract

This thesis takes as its starting point an operational framework of Kafka’s law which re-orients the usual methodology of epistemology when approaching the legal system. By immunising itself against risks that accompany the legal community it governs, Kafka’s law – which operates as a simulacrum of itself – ends up interning its subjects in indefinite trials through an infinite turnover of legal codes. Following the logic of prophylaxis, law attempts to curb life’s potentiality to the extent that it parenthesises “guilty” bodies in a dimension that precludes legal defence, pardon, and assimilation into society. The culmination of this type of parenthesised life emerges as nothing other than bare life. Life reduced to this mode may be turned over absolutely to the entire corpus of juridical power and eventually sacrificed. Approaching The Trial through the lens of critical theory on law and biopolitics positions the text as a framework of prophylaxis and governance.