QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:
Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents

This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Steiner, P. Search for Related Content

Justice in Prague, Political and Poetic: Some Reflections on the Slánsk Trial (with Constant Reference to Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera)

Slavic Literature, University of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the proceedings against the general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Rudolf Slánsk, and thirteen other high officials. The most striking feature of confessional trials such as his is the lack of any manifest culpability for gross miscarriages of justice. To explain the phenomenon, this essay draws an analogy to poetic techniques that inform Franz Kafka's universe of discourse (prolepsis, actualization of figures of speech, illocutions lacking conventional force). The concluding section illustrates howguilt that was suppressed for fifteen years burst into the open in Milan Kundera's novel The Joke, and howthis text prefigured the discourse of reformist Communism during Prague spring of 1968.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				C. Vatulescu The Politics of Estrangement: Tracking Shklovsky's Device through Literary and Policing Practices Poetics Today, March 1, 2006; 27(1): 35 - 66. [Abstract] [PDF]