Kafka's Zoopoetics
Nonhuman figures are ubiquitous in the work of Franz Kafka, from his early stories down to his very last one. Despite their prominence throughout his oeuvre, Kafka’s animal representations have been considered first and foremost as mere allegories of intrahuman matters. In recent years, the allegori...
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| Materiálatiipa: | Online |
| Giella: | eaŋgalasgiella |
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University of Michigan Press
2021
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| Fáttát: | |
| Liŋkkat: | ONIX_20211102_9780472902095_25 |
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| _version_ | 1869530257059479552 |
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| author | Harel, Naama |
| author_browse | Harel, Naama |
| author_facet | Harel, Naama |
| author_sort | Harel, Naama |
| collection | Directory of Open Access Books |
| description | Nonhuman figures are ubiquitous in the work of Franz Kafka, from his early stories down to his very last one. Despite their prominence throughout his oeuvre, Kafka’s animal representations have been considered first and foremost as mere allegories of intrahuman matters. In recent years, the allegorization of Kafka’s animals has been poetically dismissed by Kafka’s commentators and politically rejected by posthumanist scholars. Such critique, however, has yet to inspire either an overarching or an interdiscursive account. This book aims to fill this lacuna. Positing animal stories as a distinct and significant corpus within Kafka’s entire poetics, and closely examining them in dialogue with both literary and posthumanist analysis, Kafka’s Zoopoetics critically revisits animality, interspecies relations, and the very human-animal contradistinction in the writings of Franz Kafka. Kafka’s animals typically stand at the threshold between humanity and animality, fusing together human and nonhuman features. Among his liminal creatures we find a human transformed into vermin (in “The Metamorphosis”), an ape turned into a human being (in “A Report to an Academy”), talking jackals (in “Jackals and Arabs”), a philosophical dog (in “Researches of a Dog”), a contemplative mole-like creature (in “The Burrow”), and indiscernible beings (in “Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse People”). Depicting species boundaries as mutable and obscure, Kafka creates a fluid human-animal space, which can be described as “humanimal.” The constitution of a humanimal space radically undermines the stark barrier between human and other animals, dictated by the anthropocentric paradigm. Through denying animalistic elements in humans, and disavowing the agency of nonhuman animals, excluding them from social life, and neutralizing compassion for them, this barrier has been designed to regularize both humanity and animality. The contextualization of Kafka's animals within posthumanist theory engenders a post-anthropocentric arena, which is simultaneously both imagined and very real. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-72615 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publishDateRange | 2021 |
| publishDateSort | 2021 |
| publisher | University of Michigan Press |
| publisherStr | University of Michigan Press |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-726152025-08-13T14:11:33Z Kafka's Zoopoetics Harel, Naama Franz Kafka literature thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism Nonhuman figures are ubiquitous in the work of Franz Kafka, from his early stories down to his very last one. Despite their prominence throughout his oeuvre, Kafka’s animal representations have been considered first and foremost as mere allegories of intrahuman matters. In recent years, the allegorization of Kafka’s animals has been poetically dismissed by Kafka’s commentators and politically rejected by posthumanist scholars. Such critique, however, has yet to inspire either an overarching or an interdiscursive account. This book aims to fill this lacuna. Positing animal stories as a distinct and significant corpus within Kafka’s entire poetics, and closely examining them in dialogue with both literary and posthumanist analysis, Kafka’s Zoopoetics critically revisits animality, interspecies relations, and the very human-animal contradistinction in the writings of Franz Kafka. Kafka’s animals typically stand at the threshold between humanity and animality, fusing together human and nonhuman features. Among his liminal creatures we find a human transformed into vermin (in “The Metamorphosis”), an ape turned into a human being (in “A Report to an Academy”), talking jackals (in “Jackals and Arabs”), a philosophical dog (in “Researches of a Dog”), a contemplative mole-like creature (in “The Burrow”), and indiscernible beings (in “Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse People”). Depicting species boundaries as mutable and obscure, Kafka creates a fluid human-animal space, which can be described as “humanimal.” The constitution of a humanimal space radically undermines the stark barrier between human and other animals, dictated by the anthropocentric paradigm. Through denying animalistic elements in humans, and disavowing the agency of nonhuman animals, excluding them from social life, and neutralizing compassion for them, this barrier has been designed to regularize both humanity and animality. The contextualization of Kafka's animals within posthumanist theory engenders a post-anthropocentric arena, which is simultaneously both imagined and very real. 2021-11-06T06:49:09Z 2021-11-06T06:49:09Z 2021-11-02T09:25:14Z 2020 book ONIX_20211102_9780472902095_25 OCN: 1114308709 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51243 9780472902095 9780472131792 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/72615 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/51243/1/9780472902095.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/51243/1/9780472902095.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/51243/1/9780472902095.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/51243/1/9780472902095.pdf University of Michigan Press University of Michigan Press 10.3998/mpub.11325807 10.3998/mpub.11325807 b7359529-e5f7-4510-a59f-d7dafa1d4d17 9780472902095 9780472131792 University of Michigan Press 217 open access |
| spellingShingle | Franz Kafka literature thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism Harel, Naama Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title | Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title_full | Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title_fullStr | Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title_full_unstemmed | Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title_short | Kafka's Zoopoetics |
| title_sort | kafka s zoopoetics |
| topic | Franz Kafka literature thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism |
| topic_facet | Franz Kafka literature thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism |
| url | ONIX_20211102_9780472902095_25 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT harelnaama kafkaszoopoetics |