Paper Chains: Bureaucratic Despotism and Voluntary Servitude in Franz Kafka’s The Castle

This article is an attempt at a ‘political’ reading of Kafka’s The Castle, as an ironical, radical critique - from a libertarian perspective - of the despotism of the modern bureaucratic apparatus. This reading is not self-evident. Like all Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss is a strange and fascinating literary document that creates perplexity and inspires various contradictory and/or dissonant interpretations. And like The Trial it has been the object of very many religious and theological readings. Michael Löwy concludes by arguing that commentators have neglected the character of Amalia, one of the most impressive female figures in Kafka’s work, who is at the heart of the libertarian individualism of the Prague writer.