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Franz Kafka's Powers Of Horror And Revolution In Poetic Language

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Franz Kafka, a son of an affluent merchant, was born and raised in a Jewish German family in Austria-Hungary. Even though composing was Kafka’s “sole desire and sole vocation” (Marill-Albérès and de Boisdeffre 13), the recognition of his legacy came two decades after his death, after the Second World War. Being a man of a delicate physical and mental condition, Franz Kafka strongly identified himself with his maternal ancestors because of their spirituality, intellectual distinction and piety (“Franz Kafka” par. 2). His Jewish heritage brought in (HIST PRES???) not only autobiographical details to the texts but also instilled a sense of the otherness, estrangement and abjection into his oeuvre. Moreover, his works, imbued with absurdity, grotesque, …show more content…

The next step is to explain the aversion to the body fluids, rotten food, illnesses and wounds, appearing in the novella. Lastly, by taking into account Kafka’s biographical aspects, parallels between Gregor’s exclusion and social ostracising of Jews back then can be drawn. Thus, in this essay I will argue that Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis can be read through the lens of Kristeva’s notion of the abject, which manifests itself on the bodily, familial and socio-cultural levels in the text, as related to the protagonist Gregor …show more content…

In The Powers of Horror Kristeva provides a definition of the abject ex-negativo, asserting that the abject is “neither subject nor object” (135), implying that it is a state which exists in-between, when the subject is directed towards its boundaries. (10). The nature of the abject is diffuse(d?), since it constitutes an ambiguous mixture of “judgement and affect, condemnation and yarning” (10). Kristeva argues that the abject strives towards “the place where meaning collapses” (2). Such an impetus designates a risk of destroying of the boundaries between the subject and the object, the personal and the social, the known and the unknown. In such a manner, not only the abject disturbs our autonomous identity, but also threatens a stable system and order in which we live. Thus, the notion of abject is closely related to the horror one experiences when crossing the boundaries. Creed (15) argues that “the horror film attempts to bring about a confrorntation with the abject […] in order to finally eject the abject and redraw the doundatirs between the human and non-human” ТУТ НАДО

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