How does the torture machine in Kafka’s Penal Colony question the concepts of justice and power?
The torture machine in Kafka’s Penal Colony exposes the relationship between violence and sanctity at the root of modern legal systems, forcing the concepts of justice and power into an uncanny ontological questioning. The machine is not merely an instrument of torture; it is the embodiment of the metaphysics of power. Here are the layers of this questioning:
- The Transformation of Justice into Sacred Violence: “The Law Is Written on the Victim’s Body”
Walter Benjamin’s Thesis on Sacred Violence: The machine carves, letter by letter, the law it governs onto the body of the criminal. This is a grotesque representation of Benjamin’s “mythic violence” (the constitutive violence of law): Justice is reduced to physical destruction.
The Divine Position of the Old Commander: The old commander, the inventor of the machine, acts like an atheistic god. The death penalty is his unwritten revelation. Here, Kafka demonstrates the intertwining of law and theology.
- The Technological Rationality of Power: The Machine is a “Desire-Device”
Foucault’s Reading of Discipline and Punishment: Modern prisons render punishment invisible; Kafka’s machine, on the other hand, rationalizes violence by exposing it. This is an inversion of Foucault’s narrative of the transition from “spectacular punishment” to “disciplinary punishment.”
Deleuze’s Theory of Machines: The machine is a “desire-coding device.” The prisoner’s cry, “Taste justice!”, demonstrates how power shapes bodies through desire.
- The Meaninglessness of the Law: “Crime Exists Only to Prove the Existence of the Law”
Agamben’s Analogy of Homo Sacer: The prisoner is an exception to the law; he neither knows the crime nor has the right to defend it. The machine demonstrates how biopolitical power holds absolute sway over “bare life.”
Kafka’s Parallel to The Trial: Like Josef K., the prisoner never learns the nature of his crime. The law is exempt from the obligation to explain itself.
- The Transformation of Language into Torture: “Writing is Taught to the Victim Through Torture”
Derrida’s Perspective on Writing and Difference: The machine’s needles embody the violence of language by inscribing “Be Just!” on the prisoner’s body. Here, Kafka reveals the brutality (grammatology) at the root of writing.
Lacan’s Critique of the Symbolic Order: The prisoner “understands” the law only at the moment of death. This is the tragedy of entry into the symbolic order: the subject can only achieve “meaning” at the cost of his own annihilation.
- The Self-Destruction of Power: The Collapse of the Machine is a Political Prophecy
The Disintegration of the Machine at the Grave of the Old Commander: Despite the new commander’s modernization efforts, the machine devours its victim (the officer). This is a metaphor for how the instruments of power can ultimately consume their owners.
Bataille’s Concept of Excess: The officer’s willing sacrifice to the machine demonstrates the erotic-fascistic allure of power. Violence becomes a kind of sacred trance.
The Machine is the Black Sun of Modern Law
Kafka’s torture machine reveals three naked truths of justice:
Law is always sustained by some form of violence.
Power can only maintain its claim to sanctity through the destruction of bodies.
The “confession” of the criminal is possible only at the moment of death—and it is a silent scream.
Kafka whispers to us:
“What you call justice was once the workings of this machine. Now its rusty gears turn in the souls of us all.”
This machine is the archetype of all “regimes of exception,” including the “illegal detainees” at Guantanamo.
