Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Out of the Marvellous, or, Scholarship and the Magic Arts
- 1 The Artist and the Terrorist, or, The Paintable and the Unpaintable: Gerhard Richter and the Baader-Meinhof Group
- 2 The Face, or, Senseless Kindness: War Photography and the Ethics of Responsibility
- 3 Provenance, or, Authenticity: The Guitar Player and the Arc of a Life
- 4 Broomstick Horrors, or, The Fog-Walker in the Wood: Keeping up Appearances in the Great War
- 5 The Strategy of Still Life, or, Art and Current Affairs: Georges Braque and the Occupation
- 6 All This Happened, or, The Real Waugh: Sword of Honour and the Literature of the Second World War
- 7 The Secret Life, or, The Soldier's Tale: Diaries and Diary-Keeping in War
- 8 Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib
- 9 It's All Fucked Up, or, The Non-Fiction Horror Movie: The Cinema and the War on Terror
- 10 Waiting for the Barbarians, or, The Hospitality of War: Civilisation and Barbarism in the War on Terror
- Index
8 - Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Out of the Marvellous, or, Scholarship and the Magic Arts
- 1 The Artist and the Terrorist, or, The Paintable and the Unpaintable: Gerhard Richter and the Baader-Meinhof Group
- 2 The Face, or, Senseless Kindness: War Photography and the Ethics of Responsibility
- 3 Provenance, or, Authenticity: The Guitar Player and the Arc of a Life
- 4 Broomstick Horrors, or, The Fog-Walker in the Wood: Keeping up Appearances in the Great War
- 5 The Strategy of Still Life, or, Art and Current Affairs: Georges Braque and the Occupation
- 6 All This Happened, or, The Real Waugh: Sword of Honour and the Literature of the Second World War
- 7 The Secret Life, or, The Soldier's Tale: Diaries and Diary-Keeping in War
- 8 Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib
- 9 It's All Fucked Up, or, The Non-Fiction Horror Movie: The Cinema and the War on Terror
- 10 Waiting for the Barbarians, or, The Hospitality of War: Civilisation and Barbarism in the War on Terror
- Index
Summary
‘What are you after? Do you think you'll bring this fine case of yours to a speedier end by wrangling with us, your warders, over papers and warrants? We are humble subordinates who can scarcely find our way through a legal document and have nothing to do with your case except to stand guard over you for ten hours a day and draw our pay for it. That's all we are, but we're quite capable of grasping the fact that the high authorities we serve, before they would order such an arrest as this must be quite well informed about the reasons for the arrest and the person of the prisoner. There can be no mistake about that. Our officials, so far as I know them, and I know only the lowest grades among them, never go hunting for crime in the populace, but, as the Law decrees, are drawn towards the guilty and must then send out us warders. That is the Law. How could there be a mistake in that?’ ‘I don't know this Law,’ said K. ‘All the worse for you,’ replied the warder.
Franz KafkaThe ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT) is nothing if not Kafkaesque. The very idea, a never-ending, all-encompassing, worldwide sweep, seems to pay a kind of tribute to Kafka and his demons. ‘Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- On Art and War and Terror , pp. 172 - 196Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009