Kafka “Shanghai-Ed”: Orientalist China in Kafka’s Fiction and Kafkaesque Phenomena in China

Primož Mlačnik

doi:10.26417/ejis.v5i2.p36-44

Abstract

During a visit to Shanghai in August 2019, I attempted to use the auto-ethnographic method to answer a few general questions: what is the image of China in Kafka’s literary imagination, what is Kafkaesque in Shanghai, and what is Shanghai-esque in Kafka? Because the combination of theoretical interest, spontaneous ethnographic observations, and personal reflections proved insufficient to respond to these questions, I also analyzed Kafka’s ‘Chinese’ stories, namely The Great Wall of China, In the Penal Colony, The Message from The Emperor, An Old Manuscript, and The Letters to Felice, and two Kafkaesque phenomena in China: the Shanghai World Expo and the Chinese Ghost Cities. I concluded that Kafka’s fiction contains certain Orientalist elements and that, through the perspective of contemporary material Kafkaesque phenomena, are more western than the West.

Highlights

In August of 2018, I attended the conference “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” that took place in Shanghai
In an over air-conditioned lecture hall, I delivered a presentation of my research paper about Franz Kafka to Chinese students: “Kafka was a man who wanted to become literature and disappear into it
In order to at least partially evade the stereotype, I decided during my visit to attempt to answer a number of general questions by making use of the auto-ethnographic method, combining theoretical interests, spontaneous ethnographic observations, and personal reflections (Marechal, 2010, 43–45) combined with methods of text analysis

Summary

Introduction

In August of 2018, I attended the conference “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” that took place in Shanghai. In an over air-conditioned lecture hall, I delivered a presentation of my research paper about Franz Kafka to Chinese students: “Kafka was a man who wanted to become literature and disappear into it. As I listened to the many excellent papers about Asian literature and cultural studies, the notion of Kafka as a signifier that represented a legitimate yet limited and possibly anachronistic field of research began to strike me as a Western cliche. What is the image of China in Kafka’s literary imagination and how does Kafka appear in the Chinese imagination? What is Kafkaesque in Shanghai and what is Shanghaiesque in Kafka?

Kafka and the Orient

Writing the City and the Book

Conclusion