Topics in Prose Fiction: Franz Kafka and the Powers of Modernity

Franz Kafka was once called an expert on questions of power. That peculiarity is the focus of this seminar. Guided by exemplary topics - the machine and the apparatus, guilt and the law, animal figures, family dramas, the world of strange objects - we will primarily discuss Kafka’s short stories as attempts at a literary analysis of power. At issue, therefore, is the relationship between narrative strategies and the political dimension of this literature. The seminar also is conceived as an introduction to the writing and thinking of one of the most prominent authors of the 20th century. Taught in German.