Freedom from the Free Will

Acknowledgments A Note on Referencing Kafka's Works Preamble: Kafka's Laughter 1. Kafka's Cages: Laughter and the Free Will Plots of Confinement and the Kafkaesque Laughter The Separation of Freedom and Unfreedom: Augustine's Invention of the Free Will Freedom From: Negative and Positive Freedom Laughter and Freedom: On Kafka's Political Technique The Cage and Its Relations: Laughter, Freedom, Ontology 2. The Abrahamic Laughter: The Topography of Freedom in "The Judgment" and The Metamorphosis Abrahamic Laughter: Between the Theological and the Political Who Is Gustav Blenkelt? The Two Interpretations The Transformation of the Ideal in "The Judgment": The Primacy of the Theologico-Political "The world of freedom" and Its Essential Fault: Blanchot's Kafka The Essential Transformation: Laughter in The Metamorphosis 3. The Return of the Body: The Ethics of Laughter Ethical Freedom: Levinas's Critique of the Free Will Ethical Laughter: The Nature Theater of Oklahoma Regaining the Power to Say "One": "A Report to an Academy" The Other's Laughter: "A Hunger Artist" "The fall is the proof of our freedom" 4. The Law of Freedom: Reading The Trial through Spinoza A Cage without Walls: Kafka and Biopolitics Spinoza's Ethical Laughter: The Empty Law of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Empty Law without Truth: The Priest's Discourse and Existential Torment The Laughter of Truth: Josef K.'s Hesitation Agamben's Antinomianism: The Biopolitical Return of Theology 5. Executing Violence: The Drama of Power in "In the Penal Colony" Two Executions: The Spectacle of Power The Death Penalty and Sovereignty The Tragedy of Modern Sovereignty and the Existential Drama of Biopolitics The Economy of Substitution: Death and the Free Will Generalized Violence as Ontology: Mirbeau's The Torture Garden The Theater of Laughter: Secondary Characters Center Stage! Toward an Ontology of Laughter: An Agonistic Economy of Freedom Postscript: A Triple or a Single Will? Notes Bibliography Index