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This chapter continues to develop the analysis of Kafka’s work from previous chapters through a discussion of the final “judgment stories,” “In the Penal Colony” and The Trial. It is shown that these narratives take the logic of sublime power and judgment to its furthest extreme in a juridical violence that merges bodily execution, language, and the law. The disciplinary nature of the law and of writing are foregrounded and intensified to the point of murder. At the same time, Kafka’s most violent and extreme judgment narratives decouple the body from the law in more subtle ways that allow for a possible escape or exit from the space of the law. It is shown that this exit is staged in every one of the judgment stories as a leap from a confined space, but only in The Trial does this leap from the law lead to something other than death or foreclosure. In formal and linguistic terms, this exit from the law in The Trial corresponds to an emphasis not on the drama of defense speech and judgment but rather on the dispersal and disaggregation of rumor, gossip, and slander.

This chapter studies Franz Kafka’s 1914 story, “In the Penal Colony,” and how the word “apparatus” attains significance in it. The apparatus is an execution machine that not only tortures and executes, but also informs the prisoner of his sentence. In a general sense, the word “apparatus” denotes something that operates according to an established set of rules—similar to the juridical institution of a penal colony. Kafka also presents another construct, an “anatomical apparatus”—the condemned man’s body. This condemned man has largely been deprived of a sense of justice, thus is unaware of the injustice brought against him. The chapter illustrates how the two different apparatuses appear suspicious regarding their seeming absence of justice. Both constructs, that of law and of life, are not only bound closely to one another, but are in fact interlocked.

This chapter analyzes the political dimensions of Franz Kafka's works. It focuses on Orson Welles' 1962 adaptation of Kafka's The Trial and the short story “In the Penal Colony.” It also explains how the Kafkaesque dimension of the Cold War provides a useful interpretative direction for this book focused on the political significance of the literary encounter with the Cold War discourse.

As a first step in bringing the penal colony and space center together, this chapter examines what “place” means in each context, tracing nineteenth-century climatic theories and obsessions with race, disease, death rates, and reproduction in the penal colony against the twentieth-century rise of ecological discourse and immigration concerns in French Guiana. It also addresses the aestheticization of nature surrounding the contemporary space center, focusing on ways of marking time in the tropics, from prison sentences to jungle tours, and comparing a search for authenticity to one for survival. From the perspective of the economic history of French Guiana, the comparison of the penal colony and the space center appears inevitable. Unlikely a pair as they may be, the two play similar roles as central state projects, uneasily married to the rest of Guyanais society. Each created a settlement to suit its needs, while contributing to the hollow nature of French Guiana's economy. At the same time, there are significant differences in the practical administration of the penal colony and space center, and the rationale behind each project remains strikingly different.

This chapter illustrates the making of the feature docudrama “The First Fagin.” It is the story of a Jewish receiver of stolen goods who lived in London in 1820 and was thought to have been the inspiration for the character of Fagin in “Oliver Twist.” The film follows the adventures of “Ikey” from London’s Newgate jail to his transportation to the worst and most savage prisons in Australia’s southern island, Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), and his trial at the Old Bailey. It is both the a story of love leading to downfall and an examination of the prison systems in nineteenth century England and Australia. Considerable coverage is given in the chapter to problems of research, co-producing a film in various countries, authenticity, working with minimum budgets, casting and working with actors.