Where lies your hidden normativity? Kafka, gesture and action

Abstract

This work takes on Franz Kafka’s alleged disregard for law. Following Walter Benjamin’s reading of his work, it is argued that Kafka carries out a practice of gestures that functions as a critique of the theory of action. This criticism —this is the hypothesis— has as its object the ontological foundations of law, founded on the concepts that make up the theory of action and that also articulate the language of law (namely: subject, intention, responsibility, guilt, action as key concepts that make sense articulated in the theory of action). The theory of action, from Aristotle to Anscombe, Brandom and Davidson, serves as the philosophical foundation of the ontology of Western law, establishing a limit between what will legally exist or not. Something that remains outside the action is, precisely, the gesture: that type of movements that, unlike actions, lack purpose, do not respond to the teleological order nor are they based on causality. This form of movements is characteristic of Kafka’s work, as well as his writing style, reasons why he becomes a privileged author when it comes to understanding the ontological critique of law. In this way, based on Kafka, a theory of gesture can be developed that allows us to show the limits and scope of the theory of action and, therefore, of law as an ontological device.