Discussion of two parables toward end of talk is truly awe-inspiring. Here is a quote from Kafka she riffs on beautifully. But first, Butler's words (around 51 mins): "We might, then, finally consider this poetics of nonarrival as it pertains to Kafka's own final bequest. It should be clear by now, many of Kafka's works are about messages written and sent, where the arrival is uncertain or impossible, about commands given and misunderstood or so obeyed in the breach or not at all. "The Imperial Message" trots the travels of the messenger through several layers of architecture; when he finds himself caught up in a dense and infinite grid of people 51.30 , a certain infinite barrier emerges between the message and its destination. So, what do we say about the request that Kafka made of Brod before he died [in 1924]? 51.40 Quote: "Dearest Max, My last request -- everything I leave behind me is to be burned unread." Kafka's will is a message sent, to be sure, but it does not become Brod's will. Indeed, Brod's will, figuratively and literally, obeys and refuses Kafka's will -- some of the work will remain unread, but none of it burnt -- at least not by Brod. Interestingly, Kafka does not ask for all the writings back, so that he can continue to destroy them himself. 52.10 On the contrary, he leaves Brod with the conundrum. Hence, his letter to Brod is a way of giving all the work to Brod and asking Brod to be the one who will be responsible for its destruction. There's an insurmountable paradox here, since the letter becomes part of the writing, and so part of the very corpus or work -- weighable to be sure -- like so many of Kafka's letters that have been meticulously preserved over the years. And yet the letter makes the demand to destroy the writing, which would logically entail the nullification of the letter itself, and so nullify eventhe command that it delivers. 52.44 So, is this command a clear directive, or is it a gesture in the sense that Benjamin and Adorno describe? Does he expect his message to reach its destination, or does he write the request knowing that messages and commands fail to reach those to whom they are addressed, knowing that they will be subject to the same nonarrival about which he wrote? Remember it was Kafka who wrote, “How on earth did anyone get the idea that people can communicate with one another by letter? Of a distant person one can think, and of a person who is near one can catch hold -- all else goes beyond human strength. Writing letters, however, means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait: Written kisses don’t reach their destination; rather, they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. It is on this ample nourishment that they multiply so enormously. Humanity senses this and fights against it, and in order to eliminate as far as possible the ghostly element between people and to create a natural communication, the peace of souls, it has invented the railway, the motorcar, the airplane. But it’s no longer any good. These are evidently inventions being made at the moment of crashing, The opposing side is so much stronger. After the postal service, it has invented the telegraph, the telephone, the radiograph. The ghosts won’t starve, but we will perish.”

@jaredszuba9319

2 жыл бұрын

“Interestingly, Kafka does not ask for all the writings back, so that he can continue to destroy them himself.” That is because Brod only found the note with Kafka’s instruction after Franz had already died. Otherwise useful lecture.

Butler's discussion of Kafka's "Jewish" suffocation fantasy, as "both agent and victim," (at minutes 26-29), with paternal largeness moments, reminds me of Ernest Becker's book Angel in Armor, in which he discusses Kafka's "The Judgment." Worth reading!

I'd love to read Dr. Butler on The Trial. Imagine her work on Orson Welles' visual translation of The Trial!

Judith Butler is probably primary among the masters of rhetoric in the entire world...in other words, she says what she means and she means what she says...bc she's also more honest than any sophistic rhetorician you're accustomed to!

40:19 away-from-here, deterritorialization

This is amazing. I can't see Foucault's hand inside the puppet at all!

Speaking about Israel's controversial claim to represent all the Jewish people and its claim to having a right to the Kafka papers on this basis, Butler notes that Palestinians comprise roughly 20 percent of Israel's population. This latter observation will likely be more routinely questioned when publics around the world come to recognize the artificial manner in which Israel has maintained its holy chalice of a Jewish majority, since in fact the state of Israel, as Miko Peled has eloquently argued, in fact comprises all the territory which it controls, including the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which are not "a land without a people for a people without a land," but rather a well-peopled land under apartheid repression, whose people, added to the "20%" Butler mentioned wound end up comprising about 50% of the people of the state of Israel, if its illegal claim to the entirety of the OPT were taken at its face value. In short, the so-called "Jewish state" is no such thing, but rather a Zionist-supremacist colonial empire -- geographically small but militarily mighty -- half of whose people are effectively bound and gagged, with the complicicty of the United States and its lackey allies.

@rocantenrocanten4150

3 жыл бұрын

bullshit..... left bullshitttttttttttttt

@AAwildeone

3 жыл бұрын

@@rocantenrocanten4150 Read your Norman Finkelstein...the Apartheid State is exposed

@wolfie8890

Жыл бұрын

@@AAwildeone that guy praised holocaust denialist david irving

ни о чем......

A pound of flesh, no more no less.