From Kafka to Society's Judicialization: Duties and Rights in Postmodernity

Abstract

From the starting point of analyzing two of Kafka’s novels and the interpretation made of them by important critics, this article analyses the psychosocial relations established between citizens and the laws that emanate from the state. In a problematizing that still possesses the traits of the old dilemma that opposed the state to civil society, we will understand the horror produced by the abrupt and violent facing off with institutional modernity and how this confrontation gives way to idealized projections of ways of coexistence where there are no modern institutionalizations. Finally, we propose some ideas to get out of the deadlock in which the contradiction between individualization and corporative belonging to claim rights with a tendency towards an authoritarian organization puts us in. To achieve these goals, we proceed with three moments of analysis: first, Kafka, his novels, and the vision of a state that remains unattainable with an ambivalent law. Then, we see the individualization effects arguing that, where it fails, the extremes of individual judicialization are also at risk of failing. In the end, we propose ways to avoid the double bind of collectivism and individualism.