Waiting, Time, and Law: A Reading of Selected Works by Franz Kafka and C. P. Cavafy

Abstract

Using Giorgio Agamben’s political philosophy, Martin Heidegger’s theories on temporality and human existence, and Jacques Derrida’s notion on “différance,” this article argues that waiting (while rooting human experiences in time) conceals the emptiness of the law and delays meaning. Modern systems of power function not through violent force but voluntary submission and the construction of fear/anticipation. Agamben’s term “bare life” (as pure biological being without legal or political qualification) signifies inclusion by exclusion, which is captured in waiting as the structure of legal power and as pure validity without meaning. Waiting is made a structural effect of power and is ironically grounded in absence and anticipation. While in his enigmatic parable “Before the Law” (1915; trans. 1933) Franz Kafka makes us ponder power as brittle and yet unquestionable for the waiting subject, C. P. Cavafy in his memorable poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1908; trans. 1915) reverses Kafka’s order, making the anonymous empire wait for the elusive enemy it constructed, thus weakening imperial power with relation to the so-called enemy. Waiting suspends time and holds progress while allowing fear to paralyze those in wait. Both works use waiting as a deconstructive device, making gaps and the unstated as substantial as the surface narrative.