The Role of Orientalist Race Theory in Kafka's
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures PERFORMING THE LETTER OF THE LAW: THE ROLE OF ORIENTALIST RACE THEORY IN KAFKA’S WRITINGS A Dissertation in German by Adam J. Toth © 2017 Adam J. Toth Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2017 The dissertation of Adam J. Toth was reviewed and approved by the following: Daniel L. Purdy Professor of German Dissertation Co-Adviser Chair of Committee Bettina Brandt Senior Lecturer of German Dissertation Co-Adviser Thomas O. Beebee Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature and German Department Head, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Sabine Doran Associate Professor of German Director of Graduate Studies, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature Charlotte D. Eubanks Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies Abstract This dissertation seeks to understand how and why selected literary works of Franz Kafka come into dialogue with and even seem to rebuke theories about “Oriental” races, particularly the Chinese and Jews, from the eighteenth and more predominantly from the nineteenth century. My dissertation brings together the subfield of philosophy called “race theory” with literary representations of racial others discussed in these theories, with a particular emphasis on the Chinese and Jews. For the purposes of this dissertation, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Lectures on the Philosophy of History) will serve as a representative of ideas discursively circulating between philosophical, historical, philological, and biological/ physiological traditions. Hegel maintains that the Chinese and Jews lack the freedom of thought necessary to make decisions on their own and defer to figures of authority, the Emperor for the Chinese and God for the Jews. I argue that Kafka’s literary works have the versatility to expose the construction of race as a concept within race theory and by extension undermine Euro-centric assumptions made about non-European others. I defer to performance theory, in particular Brecht’s notion of Verfremdungseffekt (Alienation Effect), which he formed after watching Mei Lanfang’s performance of a Beijing Opera in Moscow, mediated through Walter Benjamin’s redemptive reading of Kafka, and through the lenses of Judith Butler’s notion of gender-performance and Tina Chen’s application of Butler and Brecht in readings of Asian-American representations in literature. In the first two chapters of this dissertation I will look at Hegel’s thoughts on the Chinese and Jews alongside Kafka’s literary works “Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer” (“The Great Wall of China”), “Ein altes Blatt” (“An Old Manuscript”), “Die Abweisung” (“The Refusal”), “Das Stadtwappen” (“The City Coat of iii Arms”), “Abraham,” and “Das Paradies” (“Paradise”). In the third chapter I will consider the role animals in Kafka’s “Schakale und Araber,” (“Jackals and Arabs”), and “Ein altes Blatt,” and “Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”) play as both analogs to racial others and to other larger political entities. In my last chapter, I consider the role of violence and sexuality alongside the racial coding of skin color in Kafka’s “Beschreibung eines Kampfes” (“Description of a Struggle”) and “In der Strafkolonie” (“In the Penal Colony”). iv Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi Kafka’s Mei Lanfangs: Introduction ............................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Breaching the Great Wall of Geist: Kafka and the Chinese People ............................ 52 Chapter 2: Babel from the Tower of Geist: Kafka and the Oriental Jews .................................... 94 Chapter 3: Of Jackals, Jackdaws, and Scarabs: Kafka’s Beasts of the East ............................... 143 Chapter 4: Kafka’s Homoerotic Struggles in (and out of) the Penal Colony ............................. 189 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 243 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 249 v Acknowledgements This project was much less the product of one ego and more the result of collaborative and insightful thought. I therefore want here to thank the many people who contributed to both this project and its success and I will do so, as best I can, in order of appearance. Thanks to my advisers, Bettina Brandt and Daniel Purdy for their careful supervision of this project. With that said, I also owe a debt of thanks to the other members of my doctoral committee, Thomas O. Beebee, Sabine Doran, and Charlotte Eubanks for taking their time to give their input and contribute to my success. Other faculty from Penn State, both present and past, who contributed greatly to this project are Tina Chen-Goudie, Samuel Frederick, Jens Guettel, Martina Kolb, Robert Bernasconi, and Willa Silverman. I’m very grateful as well to the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State for supporting my research through the Humanities Initiative Dissertation Release. I must additionally thank my graduate colleagues Darwin Tsen, Shakil Rabbi, Michelle Decker (now at Scripps College), Victoria Lupascu, Max Jensen, Nick Henry (now at Baylor University), Courtney Johnson-Fowler, Christine Gardner, Mallory Bubar, James Kopf, Lauren Brooks, Kate Anderson, Mary Fisk, Kelly and Jonathan Lehtonen, Kristen Fisher, Lea Pao, Lubna Safi (UC Berkeley), Merve Tabur, Ivana Ancic, Irenae Aigbedion, and Aurélie Matheron for contributing feedback and other forms of support to this project and myself. Of course this project would not enjoy the success it does and will without the help of the administrative staff members of Penn State’s School of Languages and Literatures, again both former and current, Jamie Perryman, Courtney Robison, Becky Bressler, Nicole Force, Bonnie Rossmann, Laura Schaffer, Becky Cross, Carol Ritter, and Kira Farrell. Lastly among those at Penn State, I want to thank my Intermediate German Language students for putting up with the assignment of debating the setting for Kafka’s “Ein altes Blatt”/ “An Old Manuscript.” vi Professionally, a debt of thanks is in order to Lee Roberts, Joanne Miyang Cho, Keridiana Chez, Imke Meyer, and Heidi Schlipphacke for allowing me to present research from this project at various stages at the German Studies Association, American Comparative Literature Association, and Austrian Studies Association’s annual conferences. Moreover, I am indebted to Prof. Pauline Moret-Jankus at Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena for co- coordinating the forthcoming conference panel on Race Theory and Literature with me at the ACLA’s 2017 meeting in Utrecht, contributing greatly to the future of this research. I am also grateful to Marie-Luise Caputo-Myer and the editorial staff of the Journal of the Kafka Society of America, who published portions of my first chapter as an article. In this dissertation one can easily find the traces and help of faculty from my undergraduate institution, the University of California, Riverside, namely those of Sabine Thürwaechter, Mariam B. Lam, Wendy J. Raschke, Thomas F. Scanlon, Benjamin King, and Stephanie Hammer, to whom I own only the sincerest gratitude. This project would not have gotten anywhere without the loving care and support of my father, William Toth, my brothers Andrew and Bradley, my uncle and aunt Art and Bonnie Orona, my uncle Norman Toth, my cousin Christy Cottrell and her children, my cousin Autumn Rodriguez-Earle and her family, my best friend Dominic Mishler, his parents Jerry and Jacque and sister, Katie, as well as Katie’s partner Eddie. My own partner Rex, who brought love into my life at its darkest moments, also deserves my appreciation. Finally, I thank my mother, Linda S. Toth, and her mother/ my maternal grandmother, Ruth D. Lawrence, who both passed away much too soon as this project was coming to life. This project is dedicated to them. vii Kafka’s Mei Lanfangs: Introduction This dissertation seeks to understand how and why selected literary works of Franz Kafka come into dialogue with and even seem to rebuke theories about “Oriental” races, particularly the Chinese and Jews, from the eighteenth and more predominantly from the nineteenth century. My dissertation brings together the subfield of philosophy called “race theory” with literary representations of racial others discussed in these theories, with a particular emphasis on the Chinese and Jews. For the purposes of this dissertation, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Lectures on the Philosophy of History) will serve as a representative of ideas about race discursively circulating between philosophical, historical, philological, and biological/ physiological traditions. Hegel maintains that the Chinese and Jews lack the freedom of thought necessary to make decisions on their own and hence defer to figures of authority, the Emperor for the Chinese and God for the Jews. I argue that Kafka’s literary works have the versatility to expose the construction of race as a concept within race theory and by extension to undermine Euro-centric assumptions made about non-European others. I defer