Vandana Sharma

Dr. Sharanpal Singh

Agambens Theorization of Literature and the Select Works
of Herman Melville and Franz Kafka:
A Critical Study
Statement of Purpose
The proposed research project for the purpose of doctoral dissertation aims to study the
literary and theoretical stakes of the selected writings of the Italian philosopher Giorgio
Agamben (b.1942), who has gathered acclaim in recent years for his approach to language,
literature and metaphysics. The central concern will be to identify how the application of his
ideas and concepts can be a pertinent way to the insightful analysis of literature in general and
the select writings of Herman Melville (1819-1891) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) in particular.
This will be attempted in relation to major literary and theoretical influences on Agamben, i.e.
the influences of the ideas of Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Jacques
Derrida. Melvilles four select works Clarel (1876), Battle Pieces and Aspects of War (1866),
Benito Cereno (1855) and Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853) will be
revisited in the light of Agambens ideas concerning literature. The list of Kafkas select literary
works will include Amerika (1927), The Castle (1926), The Trial (1925) and The Metamorphosis
(1915).
Agamben first elaborately alluded to literature in The Man without Content (1970) which
is a critique of modern literature and the visual arts. Then he went on to discuss literature in
Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (1977), Language and Death: The Place of
Negativity (1982), The Idea of Prose (1985), The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics (1996),
and Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (1999). These select six works constitute a
third of his total published output and by far the most unrelenting engagement with literature by
any contemporary philosopher. Majority of Agambens other philosophical works also draw
heavily upon keen readings of literary texts. These essentials raise a firm rationale to attempt a
full-length study of Agambens insights and their application to literature in general and select
literary texts of Melville and Kafka.

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Agamben critiques a large number of earlier writers: from Plato, Walter Benjamin, Kafka to
Charles Baudelaire in his foremost work The Man without Content (1970). He continues his
analysis of poetic language in his next work Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture
(1977). Agamben writes on issues of space of negativity and the relation between death and
language central to literary theory and deconstruction in Language and Death: The Place of
Negativity (1982). In Hegels poem Eleusis, Agamben observes the content of Eleusinian
mystery which is the experience of the negativity that is always inherent in any meaning
(Language and Death 13).
Agambens thought seeks a new form, a new "prose" in his next work The Idea of Prose
(1985). Rearticulating the relationships between prose and poetry, Agamben attempts to rethink
the nature of poetic language in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante Alighieri in his The
End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics (1996). He posits: poetry lives only in the tension and
differencebetween sound and sense, between the semiotic sphere and the semantic sphere
(The End of the Poem 109). In his next collection Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy
(1999), Agambens extensive essay on Herman Melvilles short story Bartleby, the Scrivener
puts potentiality and actuality in an altogether new light.
The increasing recognition accorded to Agambens oeuvre has resulted in the beginning
of a serious discussion of the literary aspects of his work. He pursues questions in every
dimension of human existence and his ideas can also be aptly applied in better understanding of
literature which reflects deeply on the human condition and socio political effects. Agamben has
himself proclaimed: I could state the subject of my work as an attempt to understand the
meaning of the verb can [potere]. What do I mean when I say: I can, cannot?
(Potentialities177).
In Herman Melvilles short story Bartleby, the Scrivener Agamben points to Bartleby
as a hopeful figure of pure potentiality because he exceeds will (his own and that of others) at
every point and is truly able neither to posit nor to negate (Potentialities 255-257). By
becoming a scrivener who does not write, Bartleby preserves his potentiality in its purest form.
According to Agamben, the concept of potentiality has never ceased to function in the life and
history of humanity, most notably in that part of humanity that has grown and developed its
potency [potenza] to the point of imposing its power over the whole planet (Potentialities177).
In literature this idea of potentiality can help in exploration of human psychology and especially
in seeing how good can turn into evil in unpredictable ways. For Agamben, if potentiality is

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simply the ability to actualize, to convert potentiality into action, then impotentiality signifies the
ability to not actualize, or to not convert potentiality into action. In Kafkas The Trial, the
protagonist Joseph K. appears as a perfect paradigm of this impotentiality which is basically
imposed upon him by the vicious system of law and society.
To arrive at a precise idea of this potentiality, it also becomes imperative to study other
important ideas within Agambens thought, videlicet, inoperativeness, decreation, profanity,
alienation and play. Agamben uses Bartlebys stance I prefer not to, that becomes gradually a
refrain as the perfect paradigm of the inoperative which is the other side of potentiality: the
possibility that a thing might not come to pass (Critical Introduction 19). In Arthur Millers
Death of a Salesman (1976) Biffs ego-crushing rejection illustrates this idea of inoperativeness
in an effective way. Bartleby, in neither affirming nor negating the requests of his employer,
removes himself from the constraints of reason and society and becomes the most forceful view
of Inoperativeness, which represents something, not exhausted but inexhaustible because it
does not pass from the possible to the actual (Critical Introduction 19).
Agamben defines decreation in the final section of "Bartleby, or On Contingency,"
entitled "The Experiment, or On Decreation" as a second creation in which God summons all
his potential not to be, creating on the basis of a point of indifference between potentiality and
impotentiality...(Potentialities 270) For Agamben, the experiments without truth concern not
the actual existence or nonexistence of a thing but exclusively its potentiality (Potentialities
260-61). According to him, poetry and thinking conduct such experiments which, do not simply
concern the truth or falsity of hypotheses rather, they call into question Being itself
(Potentialities 260). Melville probes this question of Being for almost all his protagonists like
Ahab, Billy Budd, Pierre, Nuku Hiva, Benito Cereno and Bartleby to name a few. His main
concern lies in finding what it means for something "to be" in a world of moral limits and
obligations.
In Profanations, Agamben defines profane as the term for something that was once
sacred or religious and is returned to the use and property of men (Profanations 73). This can be
readily instanced from Melvilles concept of taboo kanaker as presented by him in his
inaugural text Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) and its sequel Omoo: A Narrative of
Adventures in the South Seas (1847). In Typee, the protagonist Tommo remains mystified by the
Typee system of taboo and in Omoo, Melville disparages the effort to civilize and christianize the

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natives because it leads to destruction of Polynesian traditions and culture and brings hypocrisy,
ignorance and hatred of other faiths among natives.
Central to understanding profanation in Agambens thought is an understanding of the
way he reformulates the concept of alienation. He looks to revive the conceptual power of the
alienating features inherent to the fetish (Means without End 76). In Kafkas The
Metamorphosis, the alienation caused by Gregors metamorphosis can be viewed as an extension
of the alienation he already felt as a person and makes him literally and emotionally separate not
only from his family members but also from humanity in general. Similarly the protagonists of
Waiting for Godot, seems to be void of meaning and evokes a feeling of alienation,
incompleteness and depression. According to Agamben:
Like the castle in Kafka's novel, which burdens the village with the obscurity of its
decrees and the multiplicity of its offices, the accumulated culture has lost its living
meaning and hangs over man like a threat in which he can in no way recognize himself.
(The Man without Content 66-67)
For Agamben ritual fixes and structures the calendar; play on the other handchanges
and destroys it (Infancy and History 69). In this way play deactivates the power inherent in the
sacred residues that characterise law, economics or politics. Agamben highlights play again as
central to the deactivation of power: one day humanity will play with law just as children play
with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it
for good (State of Exception 64). This relationship between playful and the sacred, Agamben
contends, is still with us today in modern society. In Melvilles Benito Cereno the problem of
human savagery and its specific manifestation in the institution of slavery basically points out the
deactivation of power inherent in sacred institutions of law and justice.
There remains no doubt that Agambens reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths and
systematic study of issues not only seeks to provide rational methods of resolving conflicts by
establishing standards of evidence but also creates novel techniques for evaluating ideas and
arguments concerning literature, morality, religion, science, and humanities in general. The
application of Agambens ideas in understanding the select works of Melville and Kafka can lead
to rewarding insights. Thus the proposed project will pave way for contribution to research
through comprehension of not only Agambens acumen as a literary theoretician, but also add to
our understanding of poetics, literature and contemporary culture through a study of his prolific
writings and select literary texts of Melville and Kafka.

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PRIMARY SOURCES
(i) Giorgio Agamben
Agamben, Giorgio. The Man without Content. Trans. Georgia Albert. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1999. Print.
---. Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture. Trans. Ronald L. Martinez. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Print.
---. Language and Death: The Place of Negativity. Trans. Karen E. Pinkus and Michael Hardt.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Print.
---. The Idea of Prose. Trans. Michael Sullivan and Sam Whitsitt. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1995. Print.
---. The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1999. Print.
---. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. Print.
(ii) Franz Kafka, Herman Melville
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. New York: Dover Publications, 2000. Print.
---. The Trial. New York: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. Print.
---. The Castle. Trans. London: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2009. Print.
---. Amerika. Trans. Charles Singleton. Princeton: N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970. Print.
Melville, Herman. "Bartleby the Scrivener." Billy Budd Sailor and Other Stories. Ed. Harold
Beaver. London: Penguin Books, 1985. Print.
---. Benito Cereno. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. Print.
---. Battle Pieces and Aspects of War. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1966. Print.
---. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Illinois: Northwestern University Press,
2008. Print.

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