Kafka, Justice, and American Perversity
"If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me." -Shakespeare
How does one recognize perversion?
The answer is simple; you feel it. In the context of society at large, life in a perverse society feels uncomfortable - feels as though something is so wrong that, as Cormack McCarthy so perfectly wrote, it is wrong all the way through. It’s when the sunlight burns your eyes, when you react to joy with contempt — it’s when you throw the baby out with the bathwater, and then the whole tub too, for good measure. You throw up your hands thinking ‘damn it all to Hell anyway.’
Perversion is when you’re so full of hate that you’re not even sure what you hate anymore, and even though you’re not sure what you’re doing anymore, you’re still doing it.
What I’m trying to get at here is, admittedly, better articulated by Franz Kafka’s short story, ‘In the Penal Colony” which allegorizes the horrifying perversity at the core of blind, uniquely American, injustice. — The narrative centers around a traveler, an outsider akin to the general public, who visits a remote penal colony. His role as an observer and a reflector of our collective unconscious is crucial. He is introduced to two pivotal characters: the Officer and the Condemned Man.
The Officer, an ardent enforcer of a unique penal system, represents the embodiment of the colony's twisted injustice. He is cold and he is cruel and he possesses an unshakable conviction regarding the righteousness of his cruelty, which appears, to him, self-evident.
The Condemned Man, by contrast, is the embodiment of humanity in its most vulnerable state. A different abstraction of the same notion - as I understand it - can described as a man on death row, who, in the final hours of his life, is made to watch a series of violent films. — However, these films are not merely a collection of violent scenes as they seem. Rather, they are a series of carefully edited video diaries that reveal the true nature of the Condemned Man’s crime.
As he watches the first film, his face is shown in close-up, and the audience sees his reaction as he watches the murder he committed. He is smiling. happy, and has enjoyed watching the murder. As he subsequently is forced to view the second film, he cries. He is sad. He has regretted watching the murder. The audience sees him watching the third film. Another close-up. He is laughing now. He is happy, having enjoyed that which he has watched. The fourth film, another close-up. He is bored, not happy. He has not enjoyed watching the murder.
Repeat — Confusion, and sadness, once again.
He regrets watching the murder. He only regrets the watching.
In the shadowy filth of the theater, the Officer punishes the Condemned Man, and watches — his eyes reflecting a cold satisfaction. Here, in this dance of death and revelation, he finds vindication for his belief in the righteousness of the justice system. To him, the Condemned Man’s vacillating emotions are mere confirmations of guilt, deserving of the ultimate sentence.
Guilt, the Officer explains, is always without a doubt. The Officer is only wrong if being alive is not a criminalized state. This is not the case we find ourselves in. The Officer feels no guilt because the law that has been inscribed on the Condemned Man’s body codifies and legalizes the suffering by the inscription of the wounds. In such a situation, the Condemned Man is, indeed, guilty.
His crime is not that he was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or in the wrong circumstances, but that he was born a human being. The Officer is not only guilty of having no human feelings, but moreover that he has no human feelings while simultaneously having been born human.
What is justice when it becomes a spectacle? What is the law when it serves not to benefit human beings, but to punish them in a grotesque and intimate manner? — After all, the prisoner’s body is the surface on which the law is written, and this law is read not by words, but by wounds. — These narratives, both Kafka’s and my own, mirror a uniquely American, blind InJustice, the perversity of which runs all the way through. For if life is a crime, then love is as well.
The American experiment is an abject failure. The chattel slavery that is inherent in the modern state of this continent serves as yet another example, though examples are, infinite and obvious. But if you don't like that, you can always just say that the American experiment is a complete success.
You can say we live in the greatest country ever, that the problem is not foundational but a result of hundreds of years of corruption. You can say that ‘Amerika’ and it’s downfall are the cause of external influence rather than having been inherently and necessarily perverse from the start. — You can say that.
All life is indeed a life worth living, but the quality of that life, the justice of that life, is naught without our courage.
- Written by M. Shultz.