Walter Benjamin on Kafka’s Work: an Unfinished Interpretation
Keywords:
capitalism, myth, history, narrative, experienceAbstract
This article addresses Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of Kafka’s work with a twofold aim: first, to argue that its main value lies in the way it helps illuminate the problems and themes that shape Benjamin’s thought; and second, to explain its unfinished character in light of the evolving concerns that run through his writings. From this perspective, the article traces the connections between Benjamin’s texts on Kafka and some of his most emblematic works, grounding the analysis in a hermeneutic approach that highlights how these texts reflect his understanding of modern society as intrinsically bound up with the capitalist mode of production. Within this framework, the discussion focuses on: (1) what Benjamin identifies as the object of Kafka’s work, located in the distortions of human existence brought about by capitalism; (2) the way this object intersects with the themes of guilt, forgetting, and remembrance; and (3) the problematic status of Kafka’s narrative forms. The article concludes by turning to those aspects of Benjamin’s legacy that make clear the unfinished character of his exegesis of Kafka’s literature.
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