Md. Nurul Quayum

Abstract: Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel The Trial is intriguing because of its depiction of a preposterous judicial system that the protagonist finds himself caught up in. The novel demonstrates the exercise of power from a recondite court that holds power over everybody, and almost everybody but the convicts is part of this ubiquitous organization. This organization, simply referred to as the court, charges people with crimes that they are unaware of, and puts them in a Kafkaesque predicament. Kafka’s protagonist, Joseph K., along with other characters of the novel, suddenly discovers himself amidst a confusing yet supposedly serious situation of extra-juridical fashion. They are deprived of rights and legal protection, essentially making them figures who can be removed and killed without any consequences from the legal authority. They are made homo sacer, a term taken from the Roman law and used by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to describe the plight of the individuals who are made outcasts in society by stripping them to bare life through extra-juridical regulations. Agamben’s homo sacer is excluded from legal protection, devoid of political life in the Aristotelian sense, thus vulnerable and reduced to bare life, and functions as a symbol of authority for the sovereign power. This paper aims to show how Joseph K. in The Trial is put through all the ordeals of homo sacer and is practically removed from existence so that the authority can keep its the sovereign power foreboding and well-founded.

Keywords: Sovereign power, state of exception, homo sacer, biopolitics

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