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Reza Banakar, University of Westminster School of Law, has published "In Search of Heimat: A Note on Franz Kafka?s Concept of Law," in volume 22 of Law and Literature (Summer 2010). Here is the abstract.

Are Franz Kafka?s descriptions of law and legality a figment of his imagination or do they go beyond his obsessive probing of his neurosis, reflecting issues which also engaged the social and legal theorists of the time? Does Kafka?s conception of law offer anything new in respect to law, justice and bureaucracy, which was not explored by his contemporaries or by later legal scholars? This paper uses Kafka?s office writings as a starting point for re-examining the images of law, bureaucracy, hierarchy and authority in his fiction; images which are traditionally treated as metaphors for things other than law. It will argue that the legal images in Kafka?s fiction are worthy of examination, not only because of their bewildering, enigmatic, bizarre, profane and alienating effects, or because of the deeper theological or existential meaning they suggest, but also as a particular concept of law and legality which operates paradoxically as an integral part of the human condition under modernity. To explore this point Kafka?s conception of law is placed in the context of his overall writing as a search for Heimat which takes us beyond the instrumental understanding of law advocated by various schools of legal positivism and allows us to grasp law as a form of experience.

Download from SSRN at the link.

Full post as published by Law & Humanities Blog on November 17, 2009 (boomark / email).