Reading Terrorism in Kleist: The Violence and Mandates of Michael Kohlhaas

Abstract

Examining Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas in terms of terrorism, I focus on a subset of critics who move beyond the debate over how to categorize Kohlhaas's violence through its means or ends, and instead point to moments of his attacks that exceed even the explanation he offers. Following this excessive violence through the framing devices of Kohlhaas's manifestos allows me to describe terrorism as an attack not only on specific people and things but on political representation itself. Reading the novella alongside Hannah Arendt's late work On Violence then reveals that it takes a specific narrative stand on this representational attack by describing the historical shift that opens when the people question their identification with the sovereign, without replacing him with either the rebel challenger or a legitimate successor.