Like Kierkegaard once wrote in his dissertation:" Irony is a kind of hyperstenia, by which one, as everybody knows, easily can die."

yours panicroom

Irony was characteristic of Romanticism. Irony may have a highly critical dimension, - but may also often have been a passive game. Philosophical speculation can look upon irony as a form of knowledge, can suggest that irony is questioning, and implicitly questioning itself, at the same time, like some sort of Self-consciousness of Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness comes before irony, and is thus a prerequisite of irony. But irony can be a hint to others, that I am using my Self-consciousness. Irony can sometimes be seen, as by Jankélévitch, as a “happy consciousness”.
It is dynamic in that it steadily creates a certain uncertainty. Irony thus is a rare species of live investigator for the truth, - it asks and stays as an intermédiare. In case of being crowned by the establishment, it is not of much use. Irony is a perfect defense, but not of worldly power. Irony is a way of mental expansion; - It defends itself against every authority, and always insists that authority never has been of any use. The irony is - in itself - never an authority. It sometimes, during certain periods in history, becomes overexploited, and then it disappears, and is replaced, at least for a while, by the straight discourse – before it reenters the scene again, all fresh. Irony often comes forth in times of change, and often it inaugurates such an era. Irony may in certain periods – often in media - get a vanguard position, and get a position where it has to take care of itself, and it then does not to care much about anchoring new hope into new realities, - it is confinium – the transition itself and might act in hubris, running wild. It is not dangerous in this state, but just fades away.
Generally irony also has a built-in sustaining power in its antithetical, "dialectical" structure, and this gives the ironist in his confinium a strong, dangerous sense of freedom, It can be a terrific weapon against oppressors and can ruin many a wall and ramparts. The freedom of ironi is a kind of freedom that is freedom from, that is: it is determined negative, a negative freedom. For Kierkegaard irony was situated between the aestethic and the ethical stage on the long road to being religious, just like the category of the “interesting” was. The aesthetic has in the irony not yet passed into the ethical, the "realization of the common ( good )".
Irony thus can be used for enjoyment, but also – as we have seen -, more radical – is for the use of breaking of new grounds. It is a sibling to Adorno´s negative dialectics. When irony serves as the preparer of the new, it is a kind of "double movement"; it demand elasticity, it demands youthful powers, it requires big funds of talent: timing of the "ironic means", - because it is the power-consuming in its protracted tension! Irony has an ability to survive almost anything, - except overexposure.
It is difficult to stop irony, once it has seriously begun. The logical / semantic/ prerequisite of irony itself, is that the meaning of it is not one. It utilizes the relative and, in this, in its dynamism, has an utopian character. Thus it can be active in the central parts of philosophy to re-evaluate and restructure meaning within a cultural sphere. Irony is seldom the questioning of just one phenomenon, it almost immediately proceeds to a whole cluster of objects. Irony has its limits. It just puts in question. It does not build! Therefore irony remains a confinium. Irony - in all its vitality and vigor and ingenuity - may, however, just questions! It is quite unable to assert anything new!
. It has - qua irony - nothing to make of itself more than the counterpart. (Sic!). But irony IS! On a meta level it still says something. And it is there for interpretation! And it may be born out of a suspicion of mischief.
But irony has yet a more problematic variant: non-transparent, secret irony, irony known on...

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” Kafka does not seem to write like the rest of us do!”. This is the cry of Zadie Smith. She has written two essays on Kafka . She claims – just like Adorno – that Kafka is not writing novels in an conventional meaning of the word “novel”, but she – in her role as an author of novels herself – still fears him. She is establishing, in The limited circle is pure, 2003 ( Cf. Kafka.: ”In me, to me, without human contact, there are to be seen no lies. The limited circle is pure.” ( TII. p.193, – 1913.).), that Kafka was totally uninterested in establishing credible psychological events, in the building of Selves and characters and in the interaction between people – things she sees as the task of the novel to enlighten – and she claims that Kafka´s entire work centers around the question: is it possible to live?. Zadie Smith asserts that Kafka is working with religious structures, but on a general level. The Iob of the Bible is for Kafka a secular Job, she says, and Kierkegaardian “leap” into the unknown, and every Tertullian faith of paradox is with Kafka a way of looking upon the world. The faith of Kafka seems at large a faith in literature, but is in general nihilism, displayed in an attitude of irony and absurdity. Smith – known for her novel White teeth – is well read concerning Kafka, but she seems wholly insensitive to the play with different levels and structures played by Kafka. She is not alone in reading Kafka one dimensionally and it is of limited interest to recognize in what way such a reception of the Kafka discourse, and a modern one from our century, by its utter simplification promotes the blurring of the picture of Kafka. Zadie Smith refers to Walter Benjamin:

”In order to justify the phenomenon of Kafka in its purity and special beauty, it is required not losing sight of one sole thing: it is beauty and purity comes from a failure.”.

In connection to this Smith claims that Kafka (also) failed in completing the three novels. And it is – according to ZS – one thing required of a novel, it is that it is completed, and in a consequent narrative line. Kafka does not meet this requirement. But – even if what SZ says is true – what Benjamin wrote might refer to something else than what ZS is talking about. ZS also claims that Kafka fails in writing about what novelists usually writes about, but she also asserts, that, what Kafka is writing about, is something just as important, as it is immensely hard to grasp, and it is to each and every one a private matter. And then, I think, it is not exactly a failure.
Zadie Smith is writing in her essay from 2003 of the two fields where Kafka according to her is working in: a. the field of time, b. the field of ethics.
It is – according to her – not “the corridors that are long” in the works of Kafka, it is time that almost stands still (!).Yet ZS is naming time ”bureaucratic” with Kafka, and she is astounded that all the characters in the novels ( without the least ironic distancing ) submits to this time, which – since it is not displayed in a realistic manner – both seems to stand still and seems to be equal to eternity. She sees this as connected to a kind of teenage-like defiance, and confuses literary technique, deliberately or not, with the grade of Kafka´s maturity.

“To Kafka the time of our social life is untrue.” Smith claims. In Kafka nothing seems to move forward towards an end, in any temporal meaning.”. . ( Cf. Freud´s claim that the unconscious does not have temporality.). There is no “then”. Smith asks herself if this is ”Jewish time”, and she comes up with a hassidic parable on time as a paralell. Only some of the short stories by Kafka contain a certain amount of change, but, in the remaining part of this authorship eternity rules, – some kind of the standstill of time. This Smith looks upon as both wrong and worthy of blame:

”In novels it is time to live. Novels are our necessary lives, our journeys, who are meant to lead somewhere.”

Before the Law is accordin...

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Excuse me for all the spelling errors and my poor language. I am terribly sorry. I will try to check my blog posts better in the future. And not be writing so extensively.

panicroom

§ 16.

Kafka´s view of the law, as perceived by me in reading Kafka´s In the penal colony, The Process and The Castle.

Kafka thinks a law grows out of the ruling class ( the power ), just like Montaigne thought, and that law then becomes more and more refined, often refined not through clarification, but through obscuration, by COMMENTATORS, who in turn are very often concealed behind the concept of "tradition", and sometimes these commentators do not even know what they are doing. Kafka believes that the commentators are very close to, or is part of the "nobility", the ruling upper class, the power, and that it is precisely the work of the commentators, that makes law possible, that allows law to survive as well as it does. Nothing remarkable in this: lawyers are processing the law. The commentators/lawyers are thus close to the power, but they are not in their own eyes the power; they are supporters of the power. How could THEY be the power? The power is the small institution at the top, how knows that the real power IS the commentators, which in turn, as we already have said, does not know this at all, thinking they are servants. The commentators are these "small geniuses", who formulate law in such a way that it is working, and at the same time is out of reach for reason: it is effective precisely because it is inaccessible to reason, and it works - by the work of commentators - all the time in its inaccessibility. The most powerful processing of law is the small comment. The process of preserving the Law by minimal changes – i.e. lots of small comments - is the main process that in reality is the dominating force within the commenting, - invisibly overshadows everything. For the law in a legal process, where a citizen is accused for a criminal offense, the most important aspect of the law is not to ensure that citizens receive a judgment that is in proper relation to the law from the citizens' point of view, but that the judgment is in such proportion to the law that law survives. Every judgment, which could threaten this, must be avoided. Thus, every single judgment above all has to strengthen the law. The process what judicial teams perform, to strengthen themselves, in carrying out fallen verdicts, and at the same time in making additions to the Law, which are comprised by elaborations of comments and of actual reports of the cases themselves, all which is undertaken by commentators. Then comes other commentators, who writes the history of law, the legends, which are introduced parallel to the comments themselves, and then of incidence in these, and you have created the a treasure, which settles in time, and constantly recreates Law. The law has an intrinsic value, but only if you look upon it from the outside.

Subordinate are both the judiciary and citizens. The law is the power. Power is the state. The judiciary is thus only slightly more upscale victims than the "victims" , those convicted. The commentators may well be people who belong to the judiciary or standing close to this, but they are always anonymous. This strengthens the law. Commentators are important, and they are too important as commentators to be allowed to appear as individuals. As individuals, they could possibly be held responsible for any errors. Commentators should remain outside of the discussion of right or wrong. Without commentators there was no Law. Therefore, the law and the commentators are regarded as something which cannot be touched or really seen. Commentators and their writings, interpretations and legends ( which may be in some cases legends of commentators – themselves -, and of other legends ) must be kept out of touch of the law.
The law will never be complete. It is merely built upon a vision. Which ordinary people do not know. That's why the best and the servants are not rigid people, as one might think, but flexible ones, open to all, to the unfinished, yes, to whims and fancies, and ev...

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