Kafka and Wittgenstein: The Case for an Analytic Modernism by Rebecca Schuman (review)

In Kafka and Wittgenstein, Rebecca Schuman argues that the search for what Kafka means is "sorely mistaken" (5). In fact, "the problems and illusions we portend to uncover, the important questions we attempt to answer—Is Josef K. guilty? If so, of what? What does Gregor Samsa's transformed body mean? Is Land Surveyor K. a real land surveyor or not?—themselves presuppose a bigger delusion: that such questions can be asked in the first place" (5). This exposure of the bigger delusion hiding behind the smaller, more obvious one, and of questions that cannot be asked, is a common thread Schuman finds in the works of Kafka and Wittgenstein—the unusual pairing that structures this book. By reading the two alongside each other and breaking down the usual divide between analytic philosophy and literature, Schuman argues that, "Kafka undermines several pretenses about prose narration in much the same way Wittgenstein undermines the pretense of philosophical progress" (11).

In doing so, Schuman makes a convincing case for a new way of thinking about modernism that brings together arguably the most important philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century with the most important literary author of that same time period to show that "logical modernism belongs with modernist studies" (39). If one has a strong aversion to the likes of symbolic logic, it will be hard to muster the openness needed to follow Schuman's lead, and yet, she offers ways of reading Kafka that are strikingly new and worth considering, opening up unseen paths to follow from the very points at which studies of his work have been treading the same ground over and over, for example, pondering the question of whether Josef K. is guilty.

The book is divided into two main sections, each with its own theme. The first focuses on logical modernism, bringing the early Wittgenstein's philosophy on the logical analysis of language in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1918) together with Kafka's earlier works: The Trial (1925), "The Metamorphosis" (1915), and "The Judgment" (1913). The second moves to the later Wittgenstein of the Investigations (1953) and Kafka's The Castle (1926), "In the Penal Colony" (1919), and his last story, "Josefine the Singer" (1924), to focus on the theme of analytic skepticism. As the book's subtitle suggests, Schuman wants to offer up for thought the idea of an analytic modernism, or "a literary modernism that shares the ideology—intentionally or not—of the early analytic tradition in philosophy" (6). For those not familiar with Wittgenstein's philosophy, the book will be at times a tough read—Wittgenstein's writings are notoriously difficult—but Schuman presents helpful synopses of his ideas at various points in the book for newcomers to his work. Schuman's own excitement about the ways in which Wittgenstein's complex ideas find their parallels in Kafka's literary works propels the reader to continue: for example, she writes, "I have found that three of Kafka's most famous stories … do nothing less than dramatize Wittgenstein's most important findings about logic and language on the fictional plane, in a fictional reality, with fictional facts" (37).

Schuman sums up her accomplishment in the book as "six works, six questions, and six ways that Wittgenstein has helped us to see that [these questions] cannot actually be asked" (194). Really? Thankfully Schuman herself poses the question one might ask after reading such a summary at the end of a dense book: "what has been the point of such an exploration for Kafka studies?" (194). To show that the questions readers and scholars have been asking about Kafka's stories and novels for several decades cannot actually be asked leaves the reader standing as if at the checkout counter with nothing in one's basket, despite having spent hours in the store, poring over goods and prices, analyzing cost-per...