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/lp/oxford-university-press/violence-and-vulnerability-kafka-and-levinas-on-human-suffering-WwWQNWkiVS
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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Copyright
- The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press 2015; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
- ISSN
- 0269-1205
- eISSN
- 1477-4623
- DOI
- 10.1093/litthe/frv044
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
In this article I read Franz Kafkas story In the Penal Colony together with Emmanuel Levinas article Useless Suffering to explore two diametrically opposed responses to vulnerability in a particular situation: when it has found expression in the form of extreme suffering. Drawing on the Latin roots of vulnerability, as registering ones woundability, I look here at responses to the suffering of one whose vulnerability has been translated from a capacity to be wounded to the suffering that wounding inflicts. Reading these texts together enables us to see things that might otherwise be invisible. Specifically, Kafkas penal colony officer presents a description of the process of torture that provides a graphic and illustrative counter narrative to the dense phenomenology of suffering with which Levinas opens his article, and Levinas identification and critique of theodicy reveals and unravels the officers fantasy of meaningful suffering.
Journal
Literature and Theology – Oxford University Press
Published: Dec 20, 2015