The French sociologist Luc Boltanski has argued that conspiracy theories and general public suspicion toward the state apparatus tend to thrive in bureaucratic societies where the information gap between those in power and those without increases. Now, since WikiLeaks set in motion a series of spectacular cases revealing the nature and extent of covert government operations, it would seem that the word “suspicion” hardly makes sense anymore, at least not in the way it used to. 

For with the access to enormous amounts of electronic data in recent years, the idea of secrecy ― or something to be genuinely suspicious of ― has virtually been undermined. Even the world’s most powerful governments and state apparatuses have fallen short of protecting their most treasured secrets, while the sheer quantity of confidential and controversial material now available online seems to have lulled the general public into a condition of perplexed indifference and resignation.

Gone are those days, it would seem, when the authority and power of the state apparatus unambiguously relied on inaccessibility and secrecy ― as depicted in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” a one-page story whose extreme simplicity is matched by its profoundly enigmatic meaning. No other story captures with such precision the close connection between bureaucracy and secrecy. An unnamed man from the countryside arrives in front of a huge gate leading to the law. The man wants access to the law, but first he must pass a fierce-looking gatekeeper who refuses to let him in. The gatekeeper further warns that behind him there are even more powerful gatekeepers protecting the law. The country man hesitates, stares through the gate, but finally decides to wait.

Days go by, weeks, months, even years; meanwhile, the man attempts everything in his power to gain access to the law ― including prayers, bribery and, more absurdly, asking the fleas in the gatekeeper’s fur collar to help him. But to no avail; when the man is about to die, old and frustrated, he asks the gatekeeper one final question: Since everyone wants access to the law, how come that in all these years, only one person, himself, has requested access? The gatekeeper, realizing that the man is about to die, shouts to the half-dead man: “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Published in 1915, in a Jewish weekly magazine, and later in a short story collection that came out in 1919, “Before the Law” was one of the few texts Kafka deemed worthy of the public’s attention. Before his death, Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his unpublished manuscripts. Brod, as we know, failed to obey his friend’s last wish, and in 1935 published a number of Kafka’s unfinished manuscripts, including the by now-classic novel “The Trial,” in which “Before the Law” is cited verbatim (in a dialogue between a priest and the main character, Josef K.).

While Kafka may have considered “Before the Law” a finished piece, leaving behind ― unsuccessfully, as it turned out ― the unfinished manuscript of “The Trial” for destruction, there is a similarity between the two stories in the sense that both narrate the story of a man obsessed with an impenetrable law, and eventually perishing in a state of ignorance and ignominy. Some have even suggested that “Before the Law” constitutes the interpretive master key to all of Kafka’s enigmatic texts ― the true meaning behind that terrifying adjective, the “Kafkaesque.”

On the other hand, if one could ever pinpoint the meaning of the word “Kafkaesque,” it would be closer to something like the absence of meaning ― or perhaps the impossibility of grasping it. The country man in “Before the Law” dies without ever having gained access to the law, while Josef K. in “The Trial” suffers a similar fate. The latter never understands what he is being accused of, whereas we are never told why the man in “Before the Law” wanted access to the law in the first place.

In both texts, one could say, the reading experience reenacts the protagonists’ frustrating situation: They cannot get access to the law, while we, the readers, cannot get access to the unambiguous meaning of the texts. Kafka thus captures the experience of bureaucracy in all its claustrophobic and labyrinthine dimensions ― by changing the focus from what was initially supposed to be important (e.g. why does he want access to the law; what is the law; what can the law do for him; and, by implication, what is the real meaning of the story) to a matter of form ― how to get beyond the gatekeepers, and gain access to those who may be of help.

That people today merely have to call a phone company to cancel a contract, in order to experience something of a similarly bureaucratic nature ― is a testimony of Kafka’s prescient powers as a writer of the modern world.

Kafka’s law is one whose authority relies solely on its inaccessibility, secrecy and invisibility; a law that at no point is in need of legitimization or justification, one that may on a whim hunt down and destroy insignificant individuals ― e.g. an unnamed man from the country ― without ever explaining why. To the individual, the law is experienced as all-powerful, but ultimately contingent and thus meaningless; a bureaucratic law which ― as Boltanski argued ― generates public suspicion and conspiracy theories.

Today, in the wake of the recent cases of whistle-blowers, the gate protecting the law’s secrecy seems to have lost its original function. And yet, we still seem more concerned about the form ― e.g. about the ethics or dangers of WikiLeaks’ actions, the whereabouts of Edward Snowden, the intentions of Bradley Manning ― than the contents; as if, once having gained access, we still stand before the law, hesitating, waiting for permission.

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.