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  • © 2011

Freedom and Confinement in Modernity

Kafka's Cages

Palgrave Macmillan

Part of the book series: Studies in European Culture and History (SECH)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Kafka’s Cages: An Introduction

    1. Kafka’s Cages: An Introduction

      • A. Kiarina Kordela, Dimitris Vardoulakis
      Pages 1-6
  3. Interpreting Kafka’s Cages

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7
    2. Special Views on Kafka’s Cages

      • Stanley Corngold
      Pages 9-28
    3. Delusions of Agency: Kafka, Imprisonment, and Modern Victimhood

      • Chris Fleming, John O’Carroll
      Pages 29-48
    4. Kafka and Derrida Before the Laws

      • Howard Caygill
      Pages 49-59
  4. Reconceptualizations of Kafka’s Cages

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 61-61
    2. Kafka’s Cage

      • John Mowitt
      Pages 63-86
    3. Kafkaesque: (Secular) Kabbalah and Allegory

      • A. Kiarina Kordela
      Pages 127-158
  5. Performatives of Kafka’s Cages

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 177-177
    2. How is the Trapeze Possible?

      • Christophe Bident
      Pages 201-211
    3. With Impunity

      • Henry Sussman
      Pages 213-237
  6. Back Matter

    Pages 239-244

About this book

Kafka's literary universe is organized around constellations of imprisonment. Freedom and Confinement in Modernity proposes that imprisonment does not signify a tortured state of the individual in modernity. Rather, it provides a new reading of imprisonment suggesting it allows Kafka to perform a critique of a modernity instead.

Reviews

'Focusing on one of Kafka's crucial problem images the cage, the prisoner, the question of imprisonment, escape, and freedom Freedom and Confinement in Modernity does away with the misleading conception of imprisonment as lack of freedom. Instead, it combines a rich variety of approaches to unfold the cage as agent of cultural productivity and of literature itself. This volume provides a shining example of collaboration between philosophy, cultural studies, and literary theory.' - Benno Wagner, Professor, Siegen University, Germany

'The essays collected in Freedom and Confinement in Modernity set out to pursue a novel approach to Kafka's world. The focus on the figure of the 'cage' is thoughtful and original, as it allows us to rethink the literary specificity of Kafka's texts in terms of broader sociopolitical concerns, and situates Kafka's challenging work at the transdisciplinary core of fields as diverse as aesthetic theory, political philosophy, literary history, and psychoanalysis. This is a marvelous and thought-provoking volume.' - Gerhard Richter, Professor of German and Director of the Graduate Program in Critical Theory, University of California, Davis

'The power to stimulate fresh questions rather than put to rest earlier ones is surely a mark of what we have come to call greatness in a writer. Few have matched Kafka in generating successive challenges to conventional wisdom not only about literature, but also about life. In Freedom and Confinement in Modernity we come to know a new Kafka, who forces us to rethink many of our assumptions about the delicate relationship between constraint and emancipation in the modern era.' - Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California Berkeley

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of German Studies, Macalester College, Saint Paul, USA

    A. Kiarina Kordela

  • University of Western Sydney, Australia

    Dimitris Vardoulakis

About the editors

DIMITRIS VARDOULAKIS teaches at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.   KIARINA A. KORDELA teaches at Macalester College, USA.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access