Get the latest tech news

Kafka's Screwball Tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog

"Investigations of a Dog" is a funny and deeply philosophical tale of a lone, maladjusted dog who defies scientific dogma and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world.

But what is screwy about the dog’s investigations — and what I mean to convey with “screwball tragedy” — has to do with their faltering trajectory, their persistently thwarted yet ever-revitalized character, the Kafkian mixture of necessity and impossibility, indispensability and hopelessness, perseverance rendered in its pure and empty form. Tilting at windmills is, of course, the Cervantine image for fighting imaginary enemies, and this famous episode epitomizes Don Quixote’s self-styled literary existence, the life he lives through the imitation of already faded (“dead”) chivalric literature. Despite his concerted efforts, the canine philosopher cannot think himself and his world, he fails to break through the wall of silence (this is the tragic aspect of the story), but he also cannot not-think these things (the screwball one), and so he pushes ahead with his idiosyncratic inquiries and iconoclastic methods, persisting in what he calls his “hopeless but indispensable little investigations.”

Get the Android app