Reading Kafka

There is hardly a more intense and lucid way of confronting modernity than reading Kafka. In this course consisting of close readings and discussions of short texts by and about Kafka we will address a series of questions: How come that this Prague Jew with an unadventurous life and a slim oeuvre has become the universally acclaimed visionary, chronicler and critic of the modern world modernity? What is Kafka’s vision of modernity and how does it relate to the medium of his art? What, in his writing, has inspired the most diverse – theological, aesthetic, psychological, political – readings? Why has he become the central reference for so many 20th and 21st century thinkers and philosophers, from Benjamin and Arendt to Derrida and Agamben? And what does it mean to read his texts today?