“Schuldig ist die Organisation”

FROM THE OUTSET, the narrative of Der Proceß (The Trial) displays medial variations of more than one kind. The basic medial intrusion is theater. This theatrical performance includes (“intermediates”), however, a second and a third medial instance: first, popular literature, especially travel literature; and second, the consciousness of the archive, of the very manuscript from which the diegesis, the world of the novel, emerges. Kafka’s seemingly inexhaustible ability to enact and dramatize modes of presentation (Vorstellung) and of reading includes even the kinds of critical attention paid to his work by readers having a fully saturated consciousness of media. “Types of Kafka interpretation can be identified and their validity measured by a scrutiny of the work, which unfolds as the adventurous combat of principles authorizing interpretations” (Corngold, The Commentators’ Despair v). This sentence was written in 1973. Some thirty years later — after guerilla theater; after the emergent claim that modernism in literature is defined by its absorption of popular culture; above all, after the expansion of the electronic archive — this point about Kafka’s wide consciousness of the formal, medial constraints on interpretation still seems correct.

In Der Proceß, the scenic element of theater (“die Schaustellung” [the “show”]; “die Komödie” [the “farce”]: P 12; Tr 7) is penetrated throughout by a scriptive element (“das in Schrift Gestellte” [that which is put in writing], “das Buch” [the book]: P 9; “das Schriftstück,” “die Papiere” [the papers]: P 12). Here the problematic imbrication of the visible Court and the (in principle) readable Law is enacted by the crossing of the media — the visible and the readable — res in media. The outcome of this scriptive medial intrusion will be — not the “clarification” (“Klarstellung”: P 22, Tr 14) that K. requires — but, rather, his being stabbed to death.

Consider how these medial interferences play out. From the very first page, Der Proceß is a play within a narrative. On awakening, Josef K. is “put out” (“befremdet”: P 7, Tr 3) not to have been brought his breakfast: it is past eight o’clock and Anna the cook, a holdover from “Die Verwandlung” (The Metamorphosis), usually brings him his breakfast before eight o’clock. Upon noting this absence of cook and breakfast, K. does immediately notice the presence of something.