Abstract

ALMEYDA-SARMIENTO, Juan David. Butler and Kafka: an approach to the inconceptuality of vulnerability from The metamorphosis. discus.filos [online]. 2022, vol.23, n.40, pp.149-166.  Epub Mar 09, 2023. ISSN 0124-6127.  https://doi.org/10.17151/difil.2022.23.40.8.

In The metamorphosis by Kafka there is an existential exposition exercise on vulnerability that is located beyond some philosophical readings on the same subject (an example of this is the research by Judith Butler on this problem). Thus, the main objective of the paper is to clarify how within The metamorphosis it is possible to find a limit situation that is sui generis, namely how vulnerability is a constitutive state that structures and gives meaning to human life in general which is more complex than the ideas that Butler, just to give a case, has managed to express. Four moments are proposed for the development of the paper: first, the corporality of the vulnerability present in the first part of the story, that is, the moment from when Gregor gets up until the moment his boss leaves; second, the precariousness of the being that is made manifest in the second moment of the story which takes place between the adequacy of the home for Gregor’s comfort until the moment in which he is hurt by his father; third, the politics of vulnerability existing in the last section of the novel which goes from Gregor’s confinement to his death; and, fourth, the vulnerability elusive by the philosophical concept is expounded.

Keywords : Franz Kafka; Judith Butler; vulnerability; philosophy; literature.

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