Immanence, exception, life. Insights from the Benjaminian Trauerspiel through Kafka

Abstract

The contradictions of the contemporary legal and political order emphasize a moment of discontinuity with the modern tradition. On the one hand, the immanentization of forms makes sovereign molarity precarious; on the other hand, in many ways these very forms reveal the permanence of the sovereign exception and the destinal Gewalt of law. In other words, the present is a chiaroscuro age; it is a “baroque” age in its political sense: like that era, the present one represents a moment of discontinuity and a clash between two different historical balances, which radicalizes the contradictions of both. Using Kafka's work, we could maybe take some ideas from the pages Walter Benjamin dedicates to the Baroque, in order to provide an indispensable key to interpreting this age of lights and shades