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8 - Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Alex Danchev
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

‘What are you after? Do you think you'll bring this fine case of yours to a speedier end by wrangling with us, your warders, over papers and warrants? We are humble subordinates who can scarcely find our way through a legal document and have nothing to do with your case except to stand guard over you for ten hours a day and draw our pay for it. That's all we are, but we're quite capable of grasping the fact that the high authorities we serve, before they would order such an arrest as this must be quite well informed about the reasons for the arrest and the person of the prisoner. There can be no mistake about that. Our officials, so far as I know them, and I know only the lowest grades among them, never go hunting for crime in the populace, but, as the Law decrees, are drawn towards the guilty and must then send out us warders. That is the Law. How could there be a mistake in that?’ ‘I don't know this Law,’ said K. ‘All the worse for you,’ replied the warder.

Franz Kafka

The ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT) is nothing if not Kafkaesque. The very idea, a never-ending, all-encompassing, worldwide sweep, seems to pay a kind of tribute to Kafka and his demons. ‘Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.’

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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