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Abstract
The text deals with the problem of judgement through the reading made by Derrida of Kafka’s “Vor dem Gesetz”. It aims at underlining the existence of an originary contamination between law and storytelling capable of overcoming the classic dichotomy between law in literature and law as literature.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Cfr. B. Maj, F. Kafka, Davanti alla legge [Traduzione con testo a fronte], CLUEB, Bologna 2008 (the quotation is on page 7)
2 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, trans. Sandra van Reenen and Jacques de Ville (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
3 «I do not think, for all these reasons, that it is a good word [un bon mot]. It is certainly not elegant [ beau]. It has definitely been of service in a highly determined situation». (J. Derrida, Letter to a Japanese Friend, in Id., Psiche. Inventions of the Other, II, eds. Peggy Kamuf and Elisabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 6). This is what Derrida thinks of “deconstruction”. He is writing a letter to the Islamologist Toshihiko Izutsu, in view of a possible translation into Japanese, certainly not an easy task, since taken literally, this word “does not mean” anything: «one should not begin by naively believing that the word “deconstruction” corresponds in French to some clear and univocal meaning.». It is not by chance that the letter ends with an invitation to find another, more beautiful word, «The chance for (a) “deconstruction” would be that another word (the same word and an other) be found or invented in Japanese to say the same thing (the same and an other), to speak of deconstruction, and to lead it elsewhere, to its being written and transcribed. In a word that will also be more beautiful».
4 J. Derrida, Dissemination, translated, with an introduction and additional notes, by Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), 128.
5 Cfr. J. Derrida, Positions, translated and annotated by Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 41–2.
6 «Now, it happens, I would say in effects, that this graphic difference (a instead of e), this marked difference between two apparently vocal notations, between two vowels, remains purely graphic: it is read, or it is written, but it cannot be heard [ne s’entend pas]» (J. Derrida, Différance, in Id., Margins of Philosophy, Translated, with Additional Notes, by Alan Bass (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1982), 3).. The written text preceded the oral discourse. The difference in spelling remains without a voice: «We will be able neither to do without the passage through a written text, nor to avoid the order of the disorder produced within it – and this, first of all, is what counts for me» (Ivi, 4). A statement to be considered very carefully, since Derrida starts from the impossibility of a purely and simply “phonetic” writing. In other words, it is a question of showing how the difference that Ferdinand de Saussure and Martin Heidegger mention is destined to remain silent and inaudible, to go beyond the domain of the word, although it must be pronounced.
7 M. Crépon, Kafka e Derrida: l’origine della legge, Micromega 2013 (http://ilrasoiodioccam-micromega.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/files/2013/05/Kafka-e-Derrida.pdf).
8 J. F. Lyotard and J. L. Thébaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 16.
9 J. F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), XXIV.
10 J. F. Lyotard and J. L. Thébaud, Just Gaming, cit., 37.
11 Ivi, 41.
12 J.-F. Lyotard, Le TRANSformateurs Duchamp: Duchamp’s TRANS/formers, trans. Ian McLeod (Venice: The Lapis Press, 1990), 135.
13 Ivi, cit., 135–6.
14 F. Kafka, Der Prozess, in Gesammelte Werke, S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M., 1953.
15 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 19.
16 Ivi, 13.
17 “The condition of possibility, the classic concept of transcendental criticism, always operates as a condition of impossibility. What makes it impossible, or more precisely compromises at the same time the rigorous purity, the identity in itself, the ontological simplicity of what thus becomes possible.” (J. Derrida, La scommessa, una prefazione, forse una trappola, in S. Petrosino, Jacques Derrida e la legge del possibile (Milano: Jaca Book, 1997), 12). In other words, the impossible is not (only) the opposite of the possible, but (also) its condition of “possibility”. The im of the impossible is certainly radical, relentless, undeniable, but it is not simply negative or dialectic, it introduces the possible, it is the usher; it brings it on according to an anachronic temporality, or according to an incredible filiation, which is moreover, precisely, the origin of faith.” (Ivi, 13).
18 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 15.
19 F. Kafka, ‘Before the Law’. Translated by Ian Johnston. http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html
20 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 29.
21 J. Derrida, Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority” trans. Mary Quaintance, in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds. D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, and D. G. Carlson (London: Routledge, 1992), 23.
22 In the justice of which Derrida speaks it is a messianism without a Messiah. «Here, what I call the escathological or the messianic is nothing other than a relation to the future so despoiled and indeterminate that it leaves heing “to come” (à venir), i.e. undetermined. As soon as a determinate outline is given to the future, to the promise, even to the Messiah, the messianic loses its purity, and the same is true of the eschatological in the sense we are giving it now. We would find ourselves with a sort of messianic eschatology so desertic that no religion and no ontology could identify themselves with it» (J. Derrida and M. Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, trans. Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), 20–1).
23 J. Derrida, Force of Law, cit., 23 (my italics).
24 Ibidem.
25 T. W. Adorno, Notes on Kafka, in Id., Prisms, Translated from the German by Samuel and Shierry Weber (Mit Press, 1983), 243.
26 Cfr. J. Derrida, Before the Law: the complete text of Préjugés, cit., 30.
27 Ivi, 30–1.
28 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit.Ivi, 28.
29 Ivi.
30 Ivi, 48.
31 Ivi, 36.
32 Ivi, 78.
33 Ivi, 42.
34 Derrida lingers on the question of the destination, in particular, when he analyses the reading of The Purloined Letter by Poe, as proposed by Lacan: “Not that the letter never arrives at its destination, but it belongs to the structure of the letter to be capable, always, of not arriving.” (J. Derrida, Le facteur de la verité, in Id., The Post Card. From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 444). The topic of this work is precisely the impossibility of the letter to reach its destination, inasmuch as it is structurally aimed at the singularity of the other. This is efficaciously explained by Silvano Petrosino: “There is a destination only because we turn to the other, but precisely and only for this reason we never reach our destination, or, in other words, we never reach our destination, even when we get there, since the one to whom we send and arrive is always and already according to the other’s way of being.” (S. Petrosino, Jacques Derrida e la legge del possibile, cit., 240)
35 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 35.
36 I. Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Arnulf Zweig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 222, cit. in J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 34.
37 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 34.
38 Ivi, 43.
39 Ivi, 53–4.
40 We must remember that the term différance is presented by Derrida as a word capable of preserving the polysemy of the Latin differre, lost in the Greek diapherein. Like the verb differre the différance is intended, in fact, to refer to postponement and procrastination, and also to ‘being other’. It brings into play both the movement that produces the differences and the result: “It is a fact to be considered that, in the French language, words ending in -ance hover between the active and the passive.” (J. Derrida, Différance, cit., 8).
41 «The time is out of joint», says Hamlet and Derrida lingers on this phrase emphasizing the ethical implications. “Let us not be surprised when we read that the OED gives Hamlet’s phrase as example of the ethicopolitical inflection. With this example one grasps the necessity of what Austin used to say: a dictionary of words can never give a definition, it only gives examples. The perversion of that which, out of joint, does not work well, does not walk straight, or goes askew (de travers, then, rather than de l’envers) can easily be seen to oppose itself as does the oblique, twisted, wrong, and crooked to the good direction of that which goes right, straight, to the spirit of that which orients or founds the law [le droit]-and sets off directly, without detour, toward the right address, and so forth. Hamlet moreover dearly opposes the being “out of joint” of time to its being-right, in the right or the straight path of that which walks upright. He even curses the fate that would have caused him to be born to set right a time that walks crooked. He curses the destiny that would precisely have destined him, Hamlet, to do justice, to put things back in order, to put history, the world, the age, the time upright, on the right path, so that, in conformity with the rule of its correct functioning, it advances straight ahead [tout droit]-and following the law [le droit] (J. Derrida, Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), 22–3).
42 J. Derrida, Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, cit., 73–4.
43 D. Foster Wallace, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed,” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2005).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alberto Andronico
Alberto Andronico (Catania, 1967) is Full Professor of Legal Philosophy at the Law School, University of Catania. He teaches Legal Philosophy and General Legal Theory at the University of Catania since 2003. He has mainly dealt with the theories of the norm and legal order, postmodern legal movements, new forms of governance, law and humanities. He has edited La legge di Lacan. Psicoanalisi e teoria del diritto (“Teoria e critica della regolazione sociale’, 2/16). Among his publications: La decostruzione come metodo. Riflessi di Derrida nella teoria del diritto (Milano, 2002), La disfunzione del sistema. Giustizia, alterità e giudizio in Jacques Derrida (Milano, 2006), Viaggio al termine del diritto. Saggio sulla governance (Torino, 2012) e Dalla norma all’ordinamento. Una lettura della Dottrina pura del diritto del ’34 (Catania, 2017).