The Lacanian philosopher Alenka Zupančič’ new book What IS Sex? (2017) is Zupančič at her absolute finest. Zupančič compellingly destabilizes any notion you might have of a sound ontological foothold in the world. One does not simply be with Zupančič. Rather than reject human sexuality as something for the meanderings of sexologists or scoffingly dismissed… Keep Reading
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy is not Kafkaesque as the recent review by Dr. Macon Holt suggests. To illustrate why, the following essay will attempt two things: First, a brief look at what Kafkaesque actually means. The argument here is that Kafka’s literature centers on the (Lacanian) big Other and thus the dictionary definition of the Kafkaesque… Keep Reading
Oh the moments, how they slip through our fingers, seemingly lost to fading memory before we can even claim to have felt them. This month on the Ark Review, we are exploring ephemera; those things so tied to the present that simply cannot come with you into the future. Today, Macon Holt explores the ephemeral… Keep Reading
Previously on Reading Kafka with Lacan, we have dealt with how the ‘external’ law machine and ‘internal’ configurations of Kafka’s characters play out in Franz Kafka’s major works, The Castle (1926) and The Trial (1925).1 In the following however, rather than attempt such a broad analysis of Kafka’s major themes, I will be focussing on his… Keep Reading
Last month, Alexander Buk-Swienty made a welcome return to the pages of the Ark Review with the short but thought provoking essay The Violence of Language and Literature. In the essay, he argued—from a Lacanian/Žižekian perspective—that more attention needs to be paid to the inherent violence of linguistic systems as they place limits upon the… Keep Reading
Language is not merely a pure and neutral tool but on the contrary, it is a violent thing that introduces division I want to outline some notes towards the consequences of the idea of language as, at its very basic operation, a violent order. For this I turn to Slavoj Žižek’s reflection on the subject in… Keep Reading
Welcome to Growth Month here at the Ark Review. Taking inspiration from the theme devised by our friends at the KBH Læser festival, we have decided to devote some of the articles/reviews/musings this month to the festival’s theme of growth (Vækst). As KBH Læser state in their description of the theme, it is hard these… Keep Reading
In my previous column on Kafka and Lacan we looked at the operation of the Law in Kafka’s novels. I argued that Kafka’s work demonstrates that the Law is situated in the Lacanian dimension of the Real. That is, Kafka’s Law is situated beyond the limit of any hermeneutic capability, and yet the Law as… Keep Reading
A reading of Kafka’s Law as a non-existent existence. We begin, of course, with an excerpt from “Before the Law,” Kafka’s famous parable from his novel The Trial (1925): “Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says… Keep Reading