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Many of Kafka's narratives place their heroes in situations of confinement. Gregor Samsa is locked in his room in the Metamorphosis, and the land surveyor in The Castle is stuck in the village unable either to leave or to gain access to the castle. Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that Kafka constructs these plots of confinement in order to laugh at his heroes' futile attempts to express their will. In this way, Kafka emerges as a critic of the free will and as a proponent of a different kind of freedom: one focused within the confines of one's experience and mediated by one's circumstances. Vardoulakis contends that his sense of humor is the key to understanding Kafka as a political thinker. Laughter, in this account, is the tool used to deconstruct power. By placing Kafka in dialogue with philosophy and political theory, Vardoulakis shows that Kafka can give us invaluable insights into how to be free—and how to laugh.

Liberty in literature. --- Free will and determinism in literature. --- Freedom in literature --- Liberty as a theme in literature --- Kafka, Franz, --- Ḳafḳa, Frants, --- Kʻapʻŭkʻa, --- Kafka, F. --- Kaphka, Phrants, --- Ḳafḳa, Amshel, --- Kafka, Franc, --- Kʻa-fu-kʻa, --- Kʻa-fu-kʻa, Fu-lang-tzʻu, --- Kāk̲apkā, --- Кафка, Франц, --- Кафка, Ф., --- フランツ・カフカ, --- קאפקא, פראנץ, --- קאפקא, פרנץ, --- קאפקה, פראנץ, --- קפקא, --- קפקא, פרנץ, --- كافكا، فرانتس، --- كفكا، فرنز، --- کافکا، فرانز، --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Kafka, Franz

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The Doppelgänger or Double presents literature as the "double" of philosophy. There are historical reasons for this. The genesis of the Doppelgänger is literature's response to the philosophical focus on subjectivity. The Doppelgänger was coined by the German author Jean Paul in 1796 as a critique of Idealism's assertion of subjective autonomy, individuality and human agency. This critique prefigures post-War extrapolations of the subject as decentred. From this perspective, the Doppelgänger has a "family resemblance" to current conceptualizations of subjectivity. It becomes the emblematic subject of modernity. This is the first significant study on the Doppelgänger's influence on philosophical thought. The Doppelgänger emerges as a hidden and unexplored element both in conceptions of subjectivity and in philosophy's relation to literature. Vardoulakis demonstrates this by employing the Doppelgänger to read literature philosophically and to read philosophy as literature. The Doppelgänger then appears instrumental in the self-conception of both literature and philosophy.

Literature --- Philosophy. --- Subject (Philosophy) --- Mental philosophy --- Humanities --- Literature and philosophy --- Philosophy and literature --- Philosophy --- Theory

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This book critiques the relation between sovereignty and democracy. Across nine theses, Vardoulakis argues that sovereignty asserts its power by establishing exclusions: the sovereign excluding other citizens from power and excludes refugees and immigrants from citizenship. Within this structure, to resist sovereignty is to reproduce the logic of exclusion characteristic of sovereignty. In contrast to this “ruse of sovereignty,” Vardoulakis proposes an alternative model for political change. He argues that democracy can be understood as the structure of power that does not rely on exclusions and whose relation to sovereignty is marked not by exclusion but of incessant agonism. The term stasis, which refers both to the state and to revolution against it, offers a tension that helps to show how the democratic imperative is presupposed by the logic of sovereignty, and how agonism is more primary than exclusion. In elaborating this ancient but only recently recovered concept of stasis, Vardoulakis illustrates the radical potential of democracy to move beyond the logic of exclusion and the ruse of sovereignty.

Sovereignty --- Democracy --- Philosophy. --- Agonistic Democracy. --- Biopolitics. --- Carl Schmitt. --- Nicole Loraux. --- Refugees. --- Sovereignty. --- Spinoza. --- Stasis. --- Violence. --- political theology.

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Spinoza, Benedictus de,

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