ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the formulation of law and transgression in the psychoanalytic philosophy of Slavoj Zizek and Franz Kafka's micro-story 'The Cares of a Family Man'. Kafka phrases the distinction of the object and the partial object as 'One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it'. Zizek argues that the illusion that drives people to believe that truth resides in Law can be described by the mechanism of transference. Zizek is concerned to show the secret transgression that underpins and makes possible the symbolic law. He formulates this concern thus: "At the beginning of Law, there is a transgression, a certain reality of violence, which coincides with the very act of the establishment of Law".
