“Time(-space) Out of Joint: Franz Kafka's Disrupted Chronotopes”

Abstract

This article introduces a new approach to spatial anomalies in Franz Kafka's work by examining them through Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the literary chronotope, situating it within the broader framework of Bakhtin's earlier ideas on answerability, responsibility, and the ethics of the act. Conceived as a triangular existential structure of possibility comprising time, space, and action, the expanded notion of the Bakhtinian chronotope serves as a key for remapping Kafka's oeuvre based on the distinct types of chronotopic disruptions it displays. These systematic disruptions erode the agency of Kafka's protagonists, leaving them unable to act properly, i.e., with genuine answerability at decisive moments. This, in turn, discloses a fundamental principle of Kafka's work: the irrevocable rupture between the spatiotemporal structures of possibility and the domain of human action.