Eigentum und Metapher: Überlegungen zu Franz Kafkas „Der Bau“

Franz Kafka’s “Der Bau” is, among others, a story about dwelling and real estate. This essay makes visible how Kafka’s late fragment considers aspects of law, narration, and metaphor in order to establish a (bourgeois) form of property. The character of this proprietary order is explored in the text. Particularly the often-neglected framework of property that Kafka assigns to the burrow and its monologuing resident reveals a connection to a well-known problem in Kafka’s literature, namely the problem of the institution. The reading of Kafka’s “Der Bau” therefore becomes – also in dialogue with aspects of Kant’s philosophy of law – a categorical contribution to the (metaphorical) institution of property itself.