Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse

Abstract

Kafka's fascination with China as an occasion for the imaginative exploration of critical otherness is the topic of this book. Taking into account the current critical focus on orientalism and post-colonial theory, it places Kafka in the context of the whole Western discourse on China, from the writings of classical commentators such as Herder, Hegel, and Schlegel to contemporary translations of Chinese poetry and colonialist travelogues. Professor Goebel discusses Kafka's narrative construction of China as an ironic appropriation and critique of orientalism's recurrent images, ideological positions and interpretive assumptions. Goebel concentrates on four representative texts that explore the problems of the Western representation of the Orient: Kafka's 'Description of a Struggle'; several letters to Felice Bauer, offering an interpretation of Chinese poetry in connection with the conflict between writing and Kafka's love for Felice; the canonical story 'The Great Wall of China', parodically appropriating sterotypes of China's stagnant history and authoritarian emperors for a refutation of colonialist ideas of progress; and the sequel 'An Old Manuscript', dramatising China's invasion by foreign powers and the breakdown of crosscultural communication. Elucidating these themes from a broadly comparative perspective, Goebel shows Kafka to be one of German modernism's most intriguing and self-reflective writers on the Orient. ROLF J. GOEBEL is Associate Professor of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.