Both Giorgio Agamben and Franz Kafka are best known for their gloomy political worldview A cautious study of Agamben s references on Kafka however reveals another dimension right at the intersection of their works a complex and unorthodox theory of freedom The inspiration emerges from Agamben s claims that it is a very poor reading of Kafka s works that sees in them only a summation of the anguish of a guilty man before the inscrutable power Virtually all of Kafka s stories leave us puzzled about what really happened Was Josef K who is butchered like a dog defeated And what about the meaningless but in his own way complete creature Odradek Agamben s work sheds new light on these questions and arrives through Kafka at different strategies for freedom at the point where this freedom is most blatantly violated