| Through readings of Franz Kafka's works, this dissertation argues against the reductive interpretation of interpretive activity as simply reductive. Kafka's works can be read as explorations of the conflict between the desire for a definitive interpretation and the difficulty and dangers of arriving at one. Many of Kafka's stories are propelled by confrontations between those engaged in definitive interpretation, called here "hermeneutical tyrants," and those who are the object of that interpretation, called here "impotent subjects."; Briefly stated, the Kafkan protagonist (the "impotent subject") is confronted by an authority figure (the "hermeneutical tyrant") who unsettles the protagonist's understanding of himself. In response, he tries to reaffirm his identity and gain the tyrant's recognition of him as he presents himself. However, the very process of seeking this reaffirmation becomes the process whereby his identity as well as his ability to make sense of the world and others in it, is dismantled by that authority. The tyrant redefines the protagonist in such a way that the latter is judged to be guilty and, in some cases, sentenced to death.; However, in the four works herein discussed, an ironic twist takes place in the protagonist's metamorphosis from interpreter to text: the impotent subject's submission to the tyrant's interpretation of him refutes the tyrant's interpretation; it is proven to be inaccurate, untrue, or unjust by the protagonist's response to it. Paradoxically, the impotent subject becomes a subversive agent, though at the cost of his existence, and undermines the interpretive power of the tyrant.; In depicting tyrannical, impotent, and subversive interpretation, Kafka's texts reveal the dangers and difficulties of interpretation, and challenge and contribute to current understandings of the relations and disjunctions between interpretation, power, and violence. In doing so, they also point to the importance, rather than the impossibility, of interpretation as an activity that we continue to engage in by resisting the temptation to cease from it, either through the claim to have completed the work of interpretation or through the claim that interpretation is impossible. |
