Katrin Becker's Zwischen Norm und Chaos is an ambitious work that draws on the concepts of Pierre Legendre's dogmatic anthropology in order to rethink the relationship between law and literature. Since Legendre's work may be relatively unknown to those working in intellectual disciplines outside law and literature studies, a large section of the book gives a clear and engaging introduction to the concepts, operations, and investments of Legendre's theory before mining its aesthetic potential, above all for works of literature. Indeed, the very notion of dogma that Legendre seeks to rehabilitate—which links normative commitments and beliefs (doxa) to a manner of appearance, making visible, and even potential deception (dokein)—makes the aesthetic into an anthropological constant: the “decor” in which the norm is presented comes to define the human just as much as the rationality of the norm itself.

Becker's engagement with Legendre does not so much seek to impose a theoretical model on literary works—in this instance, Kafka's Der Process and Hoffmann's Der Sandmann—as much as to let these works shine through a conceptual prism and thereby uncover latent features of literary art that would otherwise remain invisible and unthematized. In so doing, Becker brings to the fore a chaotic potential in these works—a disruptive literary agency—that undermines attempts to read literature primarily as a discursive resource aimed at the stabilization of preexistent normative commitments.

Cleaving too close to a theoretical scaffolding is not without its risks: does the work of art become submerged behind a conceptual edifice? Is the capacity of the work of art to stimulate thought and novelty tamed inasmuch as it is regarded as an allegory, an illustrative example operating in the service of a theory, or a feedback mechanism whose ultimate purpose is to problematize, expand or modify a theory (the work serving the theory rather than the theory serving the work)? If one regards theory not as the production of truth, but rather, as a manner of seeing the phenomenon in a different conceptual landscape and making it speak with a different voice—literature as the “voice” of law, to draw on Becker's phrase—then these potential risks can be navigated inasmuch as the theory itself becomes a source of profound alienation: throw the work of art into a sea of concepts and observe what comes up from the depths.