Artículos
Vol. 14 (2023): Especial: Walter Benjamin y Hannah Arendt: Diálogos (in)interrumpidos
Kafka, the Creatures and the Law. Where Arendt and Benjamin meet and parting ways
Abstract
This article explores several reasons why Arendt may have been inspired by Benjamin to distance herself from him. Above all, the conception of nature as ruin and the relationship between history and nature, which Benjamin characterises as natural history. Alongside this, the "nuda vida" and the notion of the "creature", which Benjamin reworks on the basis of baroque drama and Arendt reconstructs in the figure of the refugees and the "abstract nakedness of the human being". Both figures reappear in their reading of Kafka as a prophetic anticipation of totalitarianism. But while Arendt draws from him the opposing figures of the pariah and the parvenu, Benjamin focuses on messianism and the oppressive character of the law. Arendt's neglect of the latter is the condition of her commitment to natality and politics, which distances her from both Benjamin and Kafka
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