Franz Kafka

From his earliest book (The Man Without Content) to one of his latest (The Use of Bodies) Agamben’s work is inhabited by Kafka’s characters: messengers, assistants, land surveyors, students, courtroom clerks, the bobbin Odradek and the mythical horse Bucephalus which becomes an attorney. The references to Kafka are often brief but in strategic places: Kafka frequently pops up in the title of a chapter, or at the end of one of Agamben’s arguments to illustrate and further deepen the point he has just made. Agamben regularly states that Kafka is the author who has most coherently or profoundly addressed the issues that he is working on (MC 112); however, the work of the Prague author has not only influenced the content of Agamben’s philosophy, but also his style.