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    Derrida Before the Law

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    5 views21 pages

    Derrida Before The Law

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    joserodrigogarciaa
    Derrida Before the Law

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Tue Fnst Session only in the third version 2 How is one to explain the fact shat, some words being, m comma added, then and only reading possible in the first two versions, come to shift, to wa vidhout cese? and without identifiable reference? Why is it has written, without any possible ambiguity, this: “This than a thousand lines, whoever will ead facing the stageboards, cheir bumble depositor ‘and then this: “This role less than a thousand lines, whoever reads je will comprehend the rules as if placed before the stageboards, their humble depository” (1891), ‘one should finally wri Pethaps he wasn’t y the author of whar all these questions. They can have text in Kafka’s lifetime. Derrida focuses on the insti BEFORE THE Law 1 westioning question “What is literature?” is taken up again inthis extended reading of Kafka’s short parable Before the Law, which appears as pare of The Trial but was pub and juridical implications of any such question: wh hich a text can be classified as “literary” or “nonliteracy to stage and sus institution rests—among them the operation of laws, the property of necessarily involves di ‘and the opening words of Kafka’s story. Neither text speci Berore THe Law law, judicial law, and natural law are al) implicated in the ation and discussion of the condition o being “before the lav,” subject to an imperative to which unmedi aceess i impossible, The srit notion of dhe law i p i bsolute separability from anything ke fetion, narra literature; et, as Destida shows in his reading of Kafk separation cannot be sustained. Not only docs iteracare simultane- Susly depend on aad interrogate laws, but the law-—the continual subject of narratives —can only be understood as sel-contradicony, Tacking i pure essence, and structurally related to what Derrida terms which, in the course of a unique drama, summons th * inreplaceable corpus, before this very text, before Before the Law. ‘There isa singularity about relationship to the law, a law of singulacity the countryman has not expecteds the La be accessible at all tines and to everyone $5 EN See Deri’ dissin f the distinction the inteview abore, pp. 42-415 and te alio the 186 Berone Tae Law call it that, comes at the end of the story, which also marks the an: “The doorkeepee recognizes t:at the man has reached 1d, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in bis ear: “No one else could ever be admited here, since this gare wes made coaly for you. Fam nov going to shut it?” ‘My only ambition, therefore, without offeri:z an answer, will be to focus, atthe risk of deforming, le question (who decides, who jadges, and with what enticement, what belongs to litera above all, to summon before the law the utterance [6 this double question, indeed, as is commonly said i ‘onciation). Sach a subject would claim ro “Titerarare”? the subject of the ‘question and the subject's system of axioms or conventions “before the law,” before Before the Law, What would this mean? \e the singularity ofthe idiom. To appear before the the purpose in the course of trial, of sivin “The trial, the judgment (Urtei this is che pl regula above the body of a text, but in any case before it. The. chosen by the author or by his or her editorial represent property itis. The sitle names and guarantees the ident i which it enti Brrons Tim Law ship with something lke the law, regardless of whether we are dealing th the specific title of a work, literary or not. a title which names the law entitled itself or as if the to the ttle. Let us suspend they to appear elsewhere, in places not prescribed by ‘example in a different context ifferent place within the same context. In this ease, for instance, the expression “Vor dems Gesciz” occurs a first oF, if you like, a second time, as the beginning of the art ofthe fist sentence, “Vor dem Gesetz ste ein Titr- sume that the same meaning underlies these two occurrences of the same expression, they are homonyms rather than synonyms, for they do not name the same thing; they do not story. The former, the t0 the fiction then atleast to the content of the fictional before the text and remains ext being told, the title (Before the Late) remains a Getion tha likewise signature ofthe author or a representative ofthe author. We authorship, as nd judgments which can follow, and 189 Bevone Tat Law the like. However, this function does not operate like the title of a ponliterary work, say a textbook of physics or law. “The reading of Before the Law which I shall now atteme: will be ‘colored by a seminar during whi ‘hough had veased cout this story of Kafka’s, In ruth, story which laid siege fo my attempt at a discourse on m¢ Kant’s doctrine of practical reason, and on Heidegge’ ip the Kantian question concemed the strange status of the example, che +s doctrine. Kant speaks of a typology ai they offer an example of the moral law: this respect is due only to the moral law, which never shows itself but is the only cause of that respect. Further, I was concerned with the “as if* (als ob) in the second formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act as if rmasim of your action were by your will to tum into @ universal iff enables us to reconcile practical reason the possibilty of unlimited st introduces narratvity and ought, at the moment when the jental imagination— ‘seems a priori to shelter these parasites’ Two other motifs ‘avg those pointing to Kafica’s story caught my attention: the ‘motif of height and the sublime that plays an esseotial role 6. eis athe pin chat she semina examine Heidegger’ ncexpetation of espe” ss teed vo the wancunentlimagiaton. Cf. Kant en the Poblen of Meaphrs ‘Sper 30 tn paral. 90 Barons mut Law and.che motif of guarding and the guardian.” This in broad out served as the context in which I read Before the Law. A space, in which iis diffculeto say whether Kafka’s story proposes a powerful, ‘mean that we shall have proof or experience of it Iseems that the law as such should never give rte to any story. To be invested with its categorical authority, the law must be without history, genesis, or any possible derivation. That would be the law of ce morality has no history: as Kant seems at fst to remind history. And when one tells stores on this subject, they ld be merely an account of that which cemains finally inacces incites from its place of hiding. One 1. Among other eanples at the endo he Critique of Pract Reson philosophy isfronted he pata fnboeiy of he seen of mora ib abo Be “row gute” fenge Yor) leatng othe docne of wie es asc Se ANANSI PED EAA ERR Beross Tie Lae what kind of law is a jal, political, natural, etc. ‘What remains conceal each law is thus presumably tbe lw ili, that which makes laws of these laws, the beinglaw df these Jaws, The auestion and the quest are ineluccable, rendering fereisble the journey toward the place and the origin of law. The law ‘elds by withholding itself, withou imparting its provenance and cs lonstitate the phenomenon of the ced by the impossible: & th and therefore of its non-otigi, for example, of ‘whom Kafka is known to have read, although law of the early 2900 is not imporant here) fession” as an answer to the as before Kafka wrote Vor gh this relation is of litle interest co ws, and Give years before the second topography and the go. From the time of the letters to Flies he gives with a kind of fa sovdation: theory of the the account of his presensiments and premonitions, ‘unsettled fervor, as though he were on the verge tells ne as though I already knew (ray empha » froma which I quote the follow _ afer the frightful labor pains of the las few weeks, I gave birch co @ ‘Jew pct of knowledge, Not entirely new tel the ruth had repeat: 5, TR The Complete Les of Signa Freud vo Wille wal ok } Bt Mason (Combe, Mass: acrard University Pes mn Burone me Law cdly shown itself and withdrawn agains but this time i stayed and looked forth) and then for a long tive filed to find it 1d you thatthe most imporeane pate Tem concemed with now. (November 14, 18975 278-75) Freud goes on to consider the concept of repression, the hyp. shat is organic in origin and inked ght position ‘elevation? The passage to the upright posit sexual zones, anal ox aves ts traces by delaying levation, diversion ofthe olfacto the schema of purification, ofthe turning away from imp: rity, from the zones of the body that are malodorous sud must not be Ba SRR AA RN REAL MOIS 9. This argue etre pentive the mora aw win Beroee mu Law touched. The turing away is an upward movement. The high (end therefore the great) and the pure, are what repression produces as ocigin of mozality,chey are what is beter absolurely, they are the origin of valve and of the judgment of value. This is farther defined in the ‘Oualine of a Scientific Peychology and later in other references to the i above us and so on. categorical imperative, the starry sky Frore the outset, therefore, Freud, like others, wanted to write a ces and told Fliess reat narrative, an in five an account of the origin ofthe iam, in other words th ‘what, by breaking away from is origin, intecupts the gencalogical intervenesas an absolutely pear as such in the course of a history. At ‘constitated by some history that might give rise which was marked by the sending of a last postcard o should also have had to © thinks, should surely be accessible stall times and to everyone, Ly deciding, he decides not to decide, he delays and adjous Berons Tae Law 1f, without taking into account any relation besween Freud and Kafka, you now place yourself before “Before the Law,” and before the doorkeeper (the Tirbiter) and if, serling before him, like the man from the country, you observe him, what do you see? Wh: captivates you to the point that you isolate and fixate upon it? Clearly ‘the abundance of the hair, whether natural or artificial, around pointed shapes, and to begin with the nasal protuberance. All symbolize that genital zone even though itis not ak ya from the country does not , the law of citics and edifices protected by gates spaces shut by doors, He is therefore astonished by ‘These are difficulties the countryman has not expected be now takes a closer [genauer] look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat lin seinem Pelomantel| che artificial hair, that of the town and the law, Which will be added to the natural hairiness), with his big sharp nose ‘aunt Eintritt bekommt, he decides to prefer to wait] until he gets Permission to enter.” ‘The sequence scans neatly, Bven narrative and chs protuberance, that through a strange and atthe sammetime a completely £ Matusal consequence (we might sey uncanny, zxheilich), the man © makes a resolution, a decision. Does he decide to renounce entry after appearing determined to enter? Not in the least: he deci buroRE THE LAW sa: Bu wat for what? For “pemision rene,” ais ween? als Sa eve aoe! char ach permission ws eked him only aa aaseas adounaent ts posble, Bu RoE ROW.” Let us be patient too. But don’t go thinking chat I am stressing this cee eon ortomakeyouwatnke aneroom of ete ere pe gi eo in id the respect before it, or categorical imperative. Is not what ales eee ‘before the law, like the man from the country also shat paralyzes and detains us when confronted with a story: is ins possibilty and its impossibility, its readability and unreadability, ins necessity and probibition, and the questions of relation, of repetition 1 Tg sight to Be due vo the een inacesbe we cae tat 2 fre ie” of iti always the doublet of the title and the incipit already suggest. Ing certain way, Vor dem Gesetz is the story of this inacce of this re yc he sony. the Bsory Of ths impose sors he map of this forbidden path: no itinerary, no method, no path to accede to the law, to what would happen there, to the topos of its occurrence. ane ey peste man om te cont ening wih the moment he looks carefully at the doorkeeper, who is himself the observer, overseer, and sentry, the very figure of vigilance, or w' say of conscience. What ‘the man from the country asks for is the way jin: is not the law defined precisely in terms: of its accessibility; is it not ‘or must it not be so “at all times and to everyor ? This cou! pen of excmplaiy, parse in Kans notion of respect”: this is only the effect of the law, Kant emphasirs due only to the lawr and appears to answer a summons only before the secs pene oly olathe ive the exam ofthe anne terested. Thus oe nee accede dey eiher © ym puso, On nce irmeatl belt a27 ser forthe de ‘of the law exceeds all finite boundaries and thus carries this risk. But doen cretion for fear at we too migt be Gveted fom OF ete thinks the man fom the country shouldbe accesible a 196 é o Co . ; Bread the text or delegate thistask and skill toa lawyer tion of 4 man of law. Unless being able to read makes the law less Bevons tie Law all times and ro everyone. It should be universal. By the same token, ro one, we maintain in French, is supposed to be ignorant of the lavr,* ‘that is to say, of positive law; provided whe is not illiterate and can the representa accessible still. Reading a text might indeed reveal that it is untouch- able, literally intangible, precisely because itis readable, and for the same reason unreadable to the extent to which the presence within it ‘ofa clear and graspable sense remains as hidden as is origin. Unread- ability thus no longer opposes itself to readabil ‘man from the country as long as he cannot reads or, if knowing how to read, he is still bound up in unreadability within that very thing ‘which appears to yield itself to be read. He wants to see or touch the Jaw, he wants o approach and “enter” it, because perhaps he does not know that the law is not to be seen or touched bat deciphered. This is perhaps the first sign of the law's inaccessibility, or of the delay imposes upon the man from the country. ‘The gate is not shu “open as usual” (says the text) but the law remains inaccessible; and ifthis forbids or bars the gate to genealogical history, italso fuels desire for the origin and genealogical drive, which wear themselves out as such before the process of the law's engenderment as before parental generation. Historical research leads the elation toward an impossible exhibition of site and an event, ofa taking-place where law originates 4s probibition. ‘The law as prohibition: ler us abandon this formula, suspend it for awhile, ‘When Freud goes beyond his initial schema forthe origin of morality and names the categorical imperative in Kant’s sense, be does so within Perhaps man is the father, as clearly stated at the end of Totent and Taboo (1912): ‘The earliest moral precepts and restrictions in primitive society have been ‘explained by us as rentions to a deed which gave those who performed 11. TN Na west cot irre la lin other words, "Ignocaace of the ls no BuFORE THE LAW i the concepe of “crime.” They fel remorse (bur how and why, before moras, befor | forthe deed and decided thar it should ever be eepeated and that its performance should bring no advanrage. “This ereative sense of gu tll persis among us. We Gal manner in nearoties, and producing new moral precepts and fotrictons, as en tonemeat for crimes that have been commit ‘2 precaution against the committing af new ones." ‘Speaking of thetoremic meal and "mankind's earliest esti to commemorate the murder of the father and the origin ofr Freud emphasizes the sons’ ambivalence toward the fath rent that | shall call, precisely, repentance, he himself appends This note is important for me. It explains the excess of render sor conferred upon the crime by its total usclessness 1 sons had in fact been able to put his original wish— ther’s place—into effect” (204). The murder fils be- cause the dead father holds even more power. Is not the best way of {alling him to keep hin alive (end finite) and is not the best way of keeping him alive to murder him? Now, failure, Frend specifies, is ction. Thus morality arises from a useless crime ‘which in act kills nobody, which comes too soon or too late and does pot pot an end to any power; in fac, it inaugurates nothing since repentance and morality bad to be possible before the crime. Freud appeats 10 cling to the reality of en event, bu this event is a sort nom-event, an event of nothing of a quasi-event which bot and annuls 2 narrative account. For this “deed” or “ ‘we so often see them follow in human a the father dead is more powerful than h ali fives better from his death and, very logically, he wou'd have been dead while he was alive, more dead alive than post mortem, v2, TN Totom and Taboo, ras. James Seachey, sg aos aro: eo Gres ne eae Barone Tie Law the murder of the father is no word. Noris in ts proper pl taking place. Event » Pure event wh: the eventility ofan event which bo d {nts fection, Nothing new happens and instate the law, the two fundamental prohi smurder and incest. However, nevertheless macks an in narration and noronl the origin of i desde aor ola steading ramos, without aninetble snd unforgetable story. Wher om ‘whether or not it has arisen from the imaginatio deatal imgination, and whed orale he rious necessity of whic it Iaw. This law is even more fighening and fontac eon id occurrence are endowed | With the qualities of-s-fable, we can das Gesetz rem: essentially inaccessible ven when it ‘ jen when it, the itself. In terms of a quest to reach the law, FT face to face and with respect, or to introduce oneself to it and into it, ory ofthe impossible. The story of Re ats and of itself renders divisible a prohibition is a prohibited s Did the man from the country wish to enter the law or merely place where law is sfesuar ‘no gentine choice, since the law figures itself as 2 kind of place ‘man from the country, who is and a taking place. At all events, also a'mian existing before the k oes not want to stay before the law, ‘The later also stands before the law. This ic to stand or appear before the Jaw is to the more 0 as respect heeps one forbidding contactor penetration, before the law, the doorkeeper enfo in the presence of the low.” The m: as it were, and thus not “in fro ig the entry to the edifice and holding at nce visitors who present themselves before the ca is therefore divided once more: according to its textual place, it was in a certain sense twofold already, as title or what it says or describes: namely. incipit We fuether redoubles its! a division of territory and an absolute opposition in regard to the law. The two characters inthe story, the man from the country, are both before th ~ whose mark in the texts p narrative body. The double inscription of “Vor dem Gesetz” fl ome Part lel. Tae double neaning of “belo” and terporal-—doer ot oscar in Feneh devant ees ‘hae to 8 spl felasoaap, end om is sed for ine. ae an enn nineteen nna eet Berout nim Law Berone ru Law blind and separated from one another, and from the law. Such isthe modality of this rapport, of tis relation, of this narration: blindnes and separation, 2 kind of non-rapport. For we must not forget thatthe doorkeeper too is separated from the law by other dootkeepers “each take note: | am powerful. And I am only {the lowest in the hierarchy, der sterste). From hall to hall cone doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last thied doorkeeper at him” (dem Anblick ... ertragen). The lowest of doorkeepers is the “man” here for the man from the county, as somerimes in the: which suggests that the doorkeeper is perhaps ne longer just @ man, ‘and that the “man” is both Man and anybody, the anonymous subje ofthe law. The latter thus decides that he would “cather waft,” atthe i is caught by the pilosity and the ‘own taking-pla rohibition: this does not mean that it prohibits, but that itis itself That Dangerous Supplement...” 1, according to the anacheony of ‘céder 2 meas both “aceole ‘The present prohibition of the law is not a prohibition in the ser" a rapport with the law, enzer into relation only wi guardians, And these are f who or what or where the la , where and how it presen it comes and whence it speaks. This is what muct be before the must of the law. [Voila ce qu'il faut au if faut de la foi. Ci fal, as used ro be written in the Middle Age ‘This, then, isthe rial and judgment, the process and the Urteil, the originary division of the law. The law is prohibited. But this concradic- the doorkeeper more permission simultaneously given and although the first door:eeper’s hint suggests that the delay willbe indefinite. After the rst guardian there are an undefined number imerable, and progressively more pow of others, peshaps they are is it short, interrupted. jswot Buvone Tee Law ‘What is delayed is not ths or that experience, the access to some some supreme good, the possession or penetration of mmebody. What is deferred forever till death is entry itself, which is nothing other than that which dictates the 1 law probibits by interfering with and deferring the “ference” [rférance”), the reference, the rapport, the relation, What 7: ‘and cannot be approached is the origin of differance: and proper taking pla than the convention of nothing bur this, people would be & taking many sisks in depriving themselves {nothing of the essence ofthe law. I the nobility is neces te and a finite way, the prejudged; not sb, EN The Broblen of One Laws (The Great Well of Chin Stoves Reflections, Ewin Mr [New Yosh: Schocken 0s Barone THe Law prejudged subject but as a subject before 2 judgment whi in preparation and always being deferred. Prejudged as concems the essence ofthe la les this essence of being which would be presence. ls cruth” is this non-trath which Heidegger calls the truth of truth. As it guards doing so, guarded by a doorkeeper who guards nothing, che door remaining open—and open on nothing, Like truth, the law would be the guar (Wabrheit, only the guarding. And this look between the guardian and the man. look, beyond beings (the lewis nothing thatisp silence. Even before moral conscience as such, there is perhape sl iden o garded he aby ofa diferene “The story (of what never happens) does not tell us wh polical? As to gender, the Geanan is neuer, das Gest, feminine nor masculine. contagion that we narrative “I” frightens the Law. It is the Law who seems to be afraid at. TN “The Law’ il lo se ele Benghouts the Eogih nsaion nace lide ti sabmerged potential fo gendoention. 32, EN Sec “The Law of Game” blow. 106 © and the man wishes to look in by stooping. I er _ difference in height (Grissemunterschied), which gradually a ature begins. A tex of pl , history, a text of knowledge or information, would not abandon a name 10 a state of not-knowing, or atleast it would do so only by cient and not in an essential or constitutive way. Here one does not able) person or a thing, wio or what showing itself, thus without producing iseld] in the space o Knowledge. The doorkeeper watches over thi than he, or does he respectfully bow before wh Madness of the Day calls the “knee” of the Law? Unless indeed the 27 oy Berons THe Law I after he decides takes him sit down. The man stays there, “sitting for days and fll his life. ln the end, he sinks back into childhood, as we s who grows, sanding and over seeing. “The law is silent, and of it nothing i sad to w nothing else. In German its cap is, who iis, where name, its common name like a proper name. We do not know ¥ Is it a thing, @ person, a discourse, 2 voice, # document, sothing that incessantly defers acces to itself thus forbidding order thereby to become something 0: 2 “The elderiy child finally becomes al “Hie does not know whether the wor eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of 5 ance that seams inextinguishably from the gateway of te Ca¥” This isthe most religious moment of the writing. “There is an analogy with Judaic law here, Hegel narrates 2 shout Pompey, interpreting it in his own way. Curious to know ‘as behind the doors ofthe tebemacle thar housed the holy of the tsiumvir approached the innermost p (Mittelpunkt) of worship. There, says Hegel essence offered to his meditation, somethin to command his respect; and when he thought he was the secret (Gebiranis), before the ultimate spectacle, he He found whe 4 & 4 L g e E i & é foengeseber und wongefthl).” after guardi ), now and later. The ‘topology (atopique), the same mad a8 Berone THe Law defers the aw as the nothing that forbids itself and the neuter hat fananls oppositi takes place, the “This nullification gives birth to she ‘within the ellipticenv tem and Taboo, buthowever far weight explain he parableofarclationcalled words: “lam now goingto € esse thn), Inthe : Frees to the place of premature escalation, of which Freud daims i _~ have given the clinical description, the symptomat the gris In terror Before hee nel Yor S being che preps Eby premature cj the judgment and conclu empty and dissemination fatal. Relation to jon that one should - touly in terms ofthe sexual org 2 / ‘of impotence and the neuroses chat Frewd decipher in it 1s this no the place [n'y at-il pas for and awaits him alone; he arrives there but cannot arcive at entering Barons Tam Lave 10 question what we calmly cal sexual he cannot arrive at arriving,” Thws runs the account of an event which Berone rie Law ungraspable, incomprehensible—but also that which touch. This is an “original” text, as to change one word oF al declare him of her to have infringed upon, text. A bad translation will always be summoned to stand before the original, which supposedly acts as a point of reference, being author by its author or his or her legal representatives and identified by which eccording to civil status isis proper name, and framed id always or disfigured the eros var Law effect of juridical performa: that lays down the law, and in the sand pronounces the law that prot not take as obviously a allegorical and tautological, Kasi refereatal framework ofits narration which leads us past a por itcomports, an internal boundary opening on nothing, before not ossible experience. le te. Vor dom Gesetz, the title says. le tine. Vor dem Geseiz, says the title. nie and bears upon it. Would notits proper object, ifithad one, be the effect produced by the play of the ttle? Te and to veil in an ellipsis the powecful operation of “The door furthermore severs th title from itsel between the expression “Before the Law” as title or proper name the same expression 2s incpit, and thu the incpit belongs to the text and hes same referent as the ttle, but qua in ofthe wextis unique. lemarks the boundary that guarantees the iden ofthe corpus. Between the two evens of Before the La ‘repetition itself, there passes a line separating two boun however, as if nothing bad happened. and, anyway, whats literature? dloes not the question once more betray the rustic simplicity ofa mn sg TN These so ies are reprodaced unchanged fom the signal, Brroas ne Law which does not refer, any more 1 event is itself an event. no literature without a work, without ana mice, and this necessary irreplaceabilty agai from the country asks when the singular the categorical engages the idiomatic, as from the country had dificu gular or ubique whea it shoul ‘was, He bad difficulty with literature. ‘How can we check the subtraction just mentioned? Ti sposes a counterproof. We find there the same c framed, with a different system of boundaries and above. proper title, except that of a volume of several hundred pages, {he point of view of iseratue, the same content gives content, norisit the form (the signifying express language or chetoric}. tis the movements offi ‘These two works become, along the lines of thee strange fi ‘metonymic interpretation of each other, each becoming a part absolutely independent of the other and e2% ‘hole; the ttle of the othe. j emerge, these conditions of possibility still remain too genera! ay BR¥ORE THE Law for other texts to which we wold hardly ascr possibilities give the text the power ro mal its own, However, this s om concision thatthe te before tive law of another, more powerful text protected by mo ‘powerful guardians. Indeed, the text (for example the so-call (author, publisher, critics, academics, archivist, librarians, and so on) cannot establish aw unless 2 more powerful s (a more powerful guardian”) guarastees Jaws and social conventions that legitimates all these things. iterature” rather than of poetry or belles-lettres, i isto emphasize the hypothesis that the relatively modern specificity of Titeratuce as ‘such retains a close and essential rappor toa period in legal history Ina different culeue, or in Europe ata different period ofthe history of positive law, of explicit or implied legislation on the ownership of ing the Middle Ages it would have been witho and supervision. But that protection bad quite a different way 1 the identity of works, which were more readily delivered mative initiatives of eopyists or other “guardians,” ro the sgraftings practiced by inheritors or other “authors” (whether anoy- ‘mous or not, whether masked by pseudonyms or not, or whether more opt, sil Ck. alo the work of Ernst Kantoxowier, especialy ignty ofthe Aris apie in Seed Sate (Loc: Vale, NY i) 3 F orless identifable individuals or gro E of corpora she vale of signatats, the difference between eating, E became established between the late seventeenth and early 1; Barons time Law regulates problems involving property rights over works, the producing, and reproducing, and so on. Roughly speaking, ths an inezeent to appeal to a law and zope, and be watched by (ao) more literature (plus de lo I this sense, Kafka’s text tells us perhaps of the ©) Taw of any text It does so by el even 2 work, within a feld, . pure and whose ttle indivisible. The work, belong to the field, i is the transformer ofthe field. Perhaps literature has come co occupy, under histo that are not merely linguistic, a position that is alway ais Berows ite Law of subversive juridicity. It would have occupied this place for some time, without itself being wholly sebversive, indeed aften the contrary, ‘This subvecsive juridicity requires that selFidemtity never be assured, nor reassuring; and it supposes also a power to produce pert the statements of the law, ofthe law ature can be, and not erature submits. Thus literature itself makes where the law is made. Therefore, under cer performativity to sidestep exis protection and receives its conditions conditions literatuce can play the law,” repeating it while divertn circumventing it. These cor Which are also the co conditions of any performative, are doubtless not pare 7 alchough any convention can give rise in its turn to a definition or contract of a linguistic nature. We touch here on one of che most ificalt points of this whole problematic: when we must recov s5uage without language, language beyond language, this interp forces which are mute but already haunted by writing. where the conditions of a performative are established, as are the rules of the game and the limits of subversion. : it plays the law, a literature passes that separates law from the from the country, “before the law” and “prior to the law” (“devant loi et “avant la ior). Prior to the beinge-before she law which that of the doorkeepes. But within so unlikely taken place? Would loses, multpied interpretations asked and div doned decipherings in mid-course, left enigmas acquitted, defended, praised, subpoenaed. This scene of zeading seemed 27-,TR jouer la ili both “paying at beng she aw” and “dees swell “paying he aw" aaaiecnalepahe pre ae es * Glarmondsworth: Fengin Books, elton = bee Bexone Te Law to be concentrated eround an insular story. However, besides all the sneconymicat hand-to-hand engagements which it could have had with The Problem of Our Laws or with Pau’s Epistle to the Romans ». this exegetical dramatization is perhaps, 1 a piece or ¢ moment, a fragment of The Trial. The latter would therefore have already set up a mise-en-abyme of everything you have just heard unless Before the Law docs the same thing through a more pe ipsis which i av his lifrime, The strctural possibilty of ths contrenabyme opens challenge to this order. In The Trial (chap. 9, “In the Cathedral", the text which for whole of Before the Law, with, narurally, the exception of the related in quotation marks by a priest. This priestis not only a na be is someone who cites or who tells a story. He cites @ work whi does not belong to the text of the ‘the writings which preface the Law’ ®: © “You are deluding y about che Court, said the priest [to K.]. "In the writings which preface the Law that pacticular dehus the » conveming Before the Law, between the priest and x. ‘would take hours to study the grain of, its ins and outs. The general law of this scene is that the text (the shore story in quotation 1 Before the Law, if you like), which seems to be the object hermeneutical dialogue between the priest and Ki also the program, down to its very detail, ofthe exegetical rises the priest and K, being i= wum the dootkeeper and the m: from the country, exchanging their place before the law, mimin another, going roward one another. Not a single dtal is miss ‘You wished, in the course of another sesi ‘ewes to keep you here until the end ofthe dey ‘even though you are seated and seated not atthe doer 28. TN Tho Popa Complite NG ran Kafe, ans. la and iin 4g ‘IL ter sefereacs vill bee 0 shall simply cite a few places in the chapter 19 the white pebbles which one drops on a path, or § the rabbi Loew which I saw again at Prague 2 st before an arrest and an investigation without the representatives of the law asked saw them, the prosecutor replied: ~That’s what all drug traffickers say.” Here then, are the litle white pebbles. isa question of prejudgment and prejudice: “Bur | am not guilty,” said Ks “it’s a misunderstanding, 1 that, how can any mar ‘one asmuch 25 the other.” hhave 20 prejudioes sgnins you,” against me. They ae inflencing even oursiders. My position is becoming, more and more dill.” “You ae misinterpreting the fats of the ease,” sad the priest. “The verdicis not so: only gradually merge into the verdict After the priest has told K. the 4 title the story of “before the law” taken from the works which precede the law, K. concludes that “the dooskeeper deluded the man.” To which the riest—t0 a certain extent identifying himself with the doorkeeper— takes up a defense ofthe later dug along lesson in Talmudic style ‘which begits, “You have not enough respect forthe written word and You are altecing the story...” During this lesson, among ot particularly destined to read Before the Law in its vey unre: hhe wams, “The commentators note in this connection: “The af . is both, in some way, an abbot and a rabbi, a kind of Sa perception of any matter and a misunderstanding of the came matter do not wholly exclude cach other? * (, So we get 2 second exegetico-Talinus Paul of the Epistle to the Romans who speaks according to the law and a °, ‘one wio says that “apart from the law sin lies dead”: spare from the aw, but when the commandment. » (Romans 7). serpretation] is based,” answered the priest, ‘oa the simple- mindedness of the doorkeeper. The arguments that he does not know the Law from inside, he knows only the way that leads o it, where he Patrols up end down. His ideas of the interior are assumed to be

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