Le logiche del confine nella letteratura di Kafka

Abstract

This essay investigates the logic of the threshold in the work of Franz Kafka, showing how it subverts the Aristotelian narrative model based on unity, development, and resolution. Through an analysis of texts such as The Castle, The Burrow, and The Metamorphosis, Kafka’s writing is interpreted as privileging open, incomplete structures shaped by a form of “negative teleology,” in which movement does not lead to an end but coincides with its own ongoing withdrawal. The threshold emerges as a central narrative space, a dimension in which identity, causality, and temporal linearity are suspended. The essay identifies multiple forms of thresholds (architectural, anthropo-zoological, biotic-inanimate, and interspecific), demonstrating how they articulate an ontology of the in-between, where beings and events exist in a state of permanent indeterminacy.