Reading Kafka Enactively

I argue that understanding cognition as enactive-that is, as constituted of physical interaction between embodied minds and the environment-can illuminate the opening of Kafka's novel Der Proceβ (The Trial), revealing it as cognitively realistic in this respect. I show how enactivism is relevant to this passage in several ways: in terms of enactive vision and imagination (based on the sensorimotor account of vision), enactive language (with a focus on basic-level categorization and readers' motor responses), and enactive emotion (drawing on appraisal theory). I also suggest that these cognitively realistic features might result in ambivalent reactions on the reader's part. © Edinburgh University Press