Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Paul DeNicola's book Literature as Pure Mediality: Kafka and the Scene of Writing delves into a departure of univocal thinking, one of "Pure Mediality" -- a deconstruction of the teleological paradigm, which beckons the work of current continental philosophers. DeNicola, a Professor of Media Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, explores the movement of "radical suspension" in Franz Kafka's work. The author DeNicola argues Kafka's short stories such as "The Judgment," passages from the Diaries, the novella The Metamorphosis, and novel The Trial are "radically immanent" while recognizing "an a-teleological, non-instrumental view of language and media", a "Pure Mediality" (11). DeNicola observes how Kafka moves beyond the metaphysical structure; consequently, he considers Kafka's literary language a winding in the space of multiplicity, an "a-metaphysical" paradigm. DeNicola claims Kafka's art is "an art of alterity" which reveals an opening of a suspension of definition in response to a refrain from judgment. Therefore, in Kafka's literary, poetic prose, the immutable system collapses into a borderless language of deferral.
Repository Citation
Martindale, Lori. "Re-imagining Kafka: Review of Literature as Pure Mediality: Kafka and the Scene of Writing, by Paul DeNicola." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 10, no. 2, 2010, pp. 1–3. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol10/iss2/10