Kafka's Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings

"The chapters included in this volume show how Kafka problematizes the liminal space between the human and the animal, thereby calling into question the nature and legitimacy of historical claims to human superiority over nonhuman animals as well as the authority of taxonomic designations about natural kinds generally. The chapters also shed valuable light on the respective contributions that philosophy and literature can make to our reflections on the human ethos, as well as on the fundamental limitations of each of these disciplines in the endeavor to find our proper place in the larger cosmic scheme of things"-Gary Steiner, Bucknell University. "Kafka's Creatures is a significant addition to the literature in the growing interdisciplinary field of animal studies. This collection of high-quality original essays focuses on numerous issues including who we are, who 'they' are, and how this information can be used to make the lives of animals better. We also see how important it is to recognize that we ourselves are animals who share mental abilities with other species, and that we should embrace this fact rather than arrogantly reject it."-Marc Bekoff, author of Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals and The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint. "This original and passionately suggestive collectionùthe first of its kind in English-offers highly illuminating analyses of Kalka's puzzling representations of animal life. Investigating themes such as the writer's subversion of anthropocentrism, his Sense of humanity's self-alienation, and his critique of social power, this book links Kafka's radical modernism to recent interests in Cognitive ethology, the deconstruction of human/animal dichotomy, and the advocacy of animal rights.-Rolf J. Goebel, University of Alabama in Huntsville. There are few literary authors in whose work animals and other creatures play as prominent a role as they do in Franz Kafka's. Exploring multiple dimensions of Kafka's incorporation of nonhuman creatures into his writing, this volume is the first collection in English of essays devoted to illuminating this important and ubiquitous dimension of his work. The chapters here are written by an array of international scholars from various fields and represent a diversity of interpretive approaches. In the course of exploring the roles played by nonhuman animals and other creatures in Kafka's writing, they help make sense of the literate and philosophical significance of his preoccupation with animals, and make clear that careful investigation of those creatures illuminates his core concerns: the nature of power; the inescapability of history and guilt; the dangers, promise, and strangeness of the alienation endemic to Modern life; the human propensity for cruelty and oppression; the limits and conditions of humanity and the risks of dehumanization; the nature of authenticity; family life; Jewishness; and the nature of language and art. Thus the essays in this volume enrich our understanding of Kafka's work as a whole. Especially striking is the extent to which the articles collected here bring into focus the ways in which Kafka anticipated many of the recent developments in contemporary thinking about nonhuman animals. Marc Lucht is visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). Donna Yarri is associate professor of theology at Alvernia University. --Book Jacket.