Über Zwirnsfäden stolpern. Franz Kafkas narrative Phänomenologie

The present paper focuses on a fragmentary yet coherent proto-phenomenological theory that Kafka may have been developing between the pages of the Zürauer Aphorismen and subtly applying as a narrative device throughout his entire production, from the early stages of Beschreibung eines Kampfes to later works such as Der Bau. Drawing on Husserl’s theories of Horizont and Abschattung, as well as on a reconstruction of Kafka’s actual sources (Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and elements of Brentano’s descriptive psychology), the essay explores Kafka’s «Entfaltung des Methodischen», framed as a narrative instantiation of the phenomenological epoché, aimed at suspending scientific certainties in favor of a continuous unfolding of perspectives. Through a close reading of Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer and Die Bäume, it will also be shown how Kafka’s narrators fall into the category of radically embodied subjectivities (Leibsubjekte), whose relationship with the diegetic world is at all times distorted, conditioned, and channeled by their perceptual apparatus. Kafka’s narrative method thus resists the teleological closure embedded in the human attempt to make sense of the world and explores the kaleidoscopic series of perspectives that can take place within it.