Abstract
Stories shape our thinking about legal relationships and the challenges of law. This paper is interested in the ways, in which spatial constellations are imagined in connection with the law. It analyzes selected stories by Franz Kafka and Rachel Shihor alongside each other. Legal themes permeate these stories. Their fictive dialogue brings forth contrasting imaginations of community, universalism, and human limitations. Starting with their variations on the Tower of Babel story, the paper then discusses Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China”, “Before the Law”, and “The Burrow”, as well as Shihor’s “The Bridge”, “The Bus”, “The Door”, and “Questions”. These stories illuminate Kafka’s and Shihor’s rich, narrative vocabulary of spatial imaginations of the law, and the fruitful contrast of their perspectives.
About the author
Dana Schmalz is a scholar of international law and legal philosophy. She is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg/Berlin. Her research is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Dana Schmalz holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Frankfurt and an LL.M. in Comparative Legal Thought from Cardozo Law School, New York. Her book “Refugees, Democracy and the Law. Political Rights at the Margins of the State” was published in 2020.
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