Kafka's Critique of Colonialism

On an initial reading some of Kafka’s stories and novels seem to suggest a simple morality tale. Scholars, however, have notoriously reached very different conclusions about the meaning of Kafka’s paradoxical parables.¹ As Theodor Adorno put it, “(Kafka’s writing) is a parabolic system the key to which has been stolen.”² Some commentators, most notably Kafka’s friend and literary executor Max Brod, have suggested that Kafka’s stories reflect an obsession with Old Testament religion, the sometimes inscrutable commands of the divine law giver.³ Others, noting Kafka’s preoccupation with the spectacle of pain and suffering, have uncovered a concern with sexuality and sadism.⁴ Finally many of those who identify a distinctively secular and modern sensibility, note that Kafka was trained as a lawyer and have read his most influential works (The Trial, “In the Penal Colony,” “Before the Law”) as an attempt to expose the irrationality and injustice intrinsic to the law.⁵

This essay explores Kafka’s reflections on the themes of law, justice, and power, topics that are the core concerns of political theory. It focuses on one of Kafka’s most suggestive stories, “In the Penal Colony.” Unlike previous interpretations that have emphasized the story’s treatment of sado-masochism or its approach to justice and punishment, this essay focuses on the colonial setting of the tale. “In the Penal Colony” is a highly stylized tale that exposes the paradoxes of punishment, but it is significant that Kafka situates this moment of exposure in a setting that is distinctly marked by geographical, cultural, and racial difference. In Kafka’s story, the colonial setting functions as a theater of power that reveals the limitations of both the authoritarian and humanitarian faces of the law.

Most previous commentators have overlooked the colonial context, insisting that the characters in Kafka’s legal narratives are symbols determined by their subordinate position in relation to the dominant legal apparatus and noting that Kafka tended to de-emphasize distinguishing features such as race, religion, or gender.⁶ This view is consistent with Heinz Politzer’s influential suggestion that Kafka’s literary genius consisted in his transformation of the genre of the parable. Like traditional Biblical parables, Kafka used highly symbolic characters and situations to express metaphysical questions and longings. Yet instead of communicating a straightforward message or moral teaching, Kafka’s paradoxes resist any simple lesson or interpretation. This essay also reads “The Penal Colony” as a parable that exposes the paradoxical nature of the law, but it does not treat the parable as a genre that works exclusively at the level of the abstract and universal. As Adorno put it, “(In Kafka’s writing) each sentence is literal and each signifies.”⁷ Following Adorno, this essay pays attention to the literal dimension of the story, particularly its colonial setting and the clues about the ideological and cultural background of the characters. By focusing on the literal (e.g. the colonial context), a deeper understanding of the political dimensions of the text becomes possible.

“In the Penal Colony”

“In the Penal Colony” opens with a conversation between the two main characters: “the Officer”, a representative of the old, authoritarian order in the colony and “the Explorer”, a neutral observer from a foreign country who is supposed to witness the execution of a soldier. The soldier is accused of disobeying his superior officer. The Explorer is troubled when he finds out that the condemned man does not know the accusation against him and did not receive a trial. The Officer in charge explains that his guiding judicial principle is that “Guilt is never to be doubted.”⁸ Any sort of investigation, he insists, or trial, would just confuse the clarity of guilt because the defendant would have told lies (146).

The Officer is much more interested in the technicalities of the execution than the niceties of legal procedure. The actual execution is to be carried out by a complex apparatus designed by the former Commandant of the penal colony and maintained by the Officer. The machine tortures the condemned man in a process that brutally mimics and transforms...