Publikacja:

‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’ Radicalising hermeneutics with Kafka’s The Castle

Data

2019
Artykuł
 
cris.legacyid6667
cris.virtual.journalance#PLACEHOLDER_PARENT_METADATA_VALUE#
cris.virtualsource.journalance648ce774-05ae-47f3-8a1b-62524c23badd
dc.abstract.plThis paper explores the politics of interpretation from the perspective of hermeneutic theory. It presents a reading of Kafka’s novel The Castle focused on critique of the business of interpretation, where suspicion unfolds in distorted, possibly fraudulent, sense making between protagonist, narrator and reader. The protagonist’s mission is neither heroic nor a call to resistance to bureaucratic absurdity, but instead, the result of hubris, hoax, or even a slip of the pen, and it becomes impossible to unpick the perils of bureaucracy from the perils of interpretation, or to distinguish between error and insight. In mining discrepancies between justification, effort and reward of interpretation, Kafka punctures the mythology of understanding, rupturing the near-sacrosanct hermeneutic connection between interpretation and meaning. His work undermines both objective and subjective understandings, leaving us distrustful of both expert and experiential perspectives. In a post-truth era with its ‘alternative facts’, The Castle feels startlingly fresh and relevant.
dc.contributor.affiliationThe Open University, UK
dc.contributor.authorLeah Tomkins
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-25T16:47:32Z
dc.date.available2025-07-25T16:47:32Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.date.published2019
dc.description.issue1
dc.description.physical37-49
dc.description.volume17
dc.identifier.issn1532-5555
dc.identifier.urihttps://repozytorium.kozminski.edu.pl/handle/item/3096
dc.languageen
dc.relation.ispartofTamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry
dc.relation.pages37-49
dc.rightsCC-BY-4.0
dc.subjectKafka
dc.subjecthermeneutics
dc.subjectexperience
dc.subtypeOriginal
dc.title

‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’ Radicalising hermeneutics with Kafka’s The Castle

dc.typeArticle
dspace.entity.typePublication