The Law before its law: Franz Kafka on the (im)possibility of law's self reflection

Authors

  • Günther Teubner Goethe University Frankfurt

Keywords:

Kafka, systems theory, law and literature

Abstract

The article offers a novel interpretation of Franz Kafka’s celebrated parable ‘Before the law’. It is inspired by recent developments in European legal theory, particularly by the work of Jacques Derrida, Niklas Luhmann and Giorgio Agamben. It suggests a dual role change in the confrontation of the parable’s protagonists - the ‘man from the country’ and the ‘law’. According to this interpretation it is not a specific individual that stands before the law but it is the legal discourse itself that is in a desperate search of its law, and the parable’s ‘law’ for its part is not a generalized and distant authority (power, morality, religion etc), but the valid and positive law of our times.  The article asks the question: What happens within the mysterious relationship between ‘Law AND law’ which has always preoccupied legal theory when that relationship is subjected to the nightmarish logic in Kafka’s universe?

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Author Biography

Günther Teubner, Goethe University Frankfurt

Professor of Private Law and Legal Sociology. Principal Investigator, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at Frankfurt University. (https://www.jura.uni-frankfurt.de/42812276/Teubner)

Capa da Revista Direito.UnB Volume 1, Número 1

Published

2014-01-01

How to Cite

TEUBNER, Günther. The Law before its law: Franz Kafka on the (im)possibility of law’s self reflection. Direito.UnB - Law Journal of the University of Brasília, [S. l.], v. 1, n. 1, p. 12–31, 2014. Disponível em: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/revistadedireitounb/article/view/24620. Acesso em: 4 nov. 2024.