Rachel Baker`s Poster

Historical Context
Is it important to consider the historical context in our reading of Kafka’s
‘In der Strafkolonie’?
- Written 1914
- European colonisation of Africa from mid 1800’s ()
...German colonisation a bit later e.g. Cameroon 1884
- German Kolonialskandale, 1905- 1910
- Dreyfuss Case, 1894
Alternative Readings...
Kafka & Nietzsche
- Link between Kafka’s work, and Nietzsche’s writings on
Apolline & Dionysian culture (Bridgewater, 1974)
Kafka’s Experience of Colonialism
- New Commandant representing new, Apolline culture, the
Old Commandant and torture representing Dionysian culture
‘which has now degenerated into an empty ritual.’
(Bridgewater, 1974)
- Kafka’s Uncle Joseph Löwy involved in opening of the
Belgian Congo
- Le Jardin des supplices (The Torture Garden, 1899) by
Octave Mirbeau
- Connection to Nietzche’s ‘Zur Genealogie der Moral’:
Evidence of Influence of Colonialism on ‘In der Strafkolonie’
‘The message which the torture machine ‘imprints’ on the
convicts’ bodies may be compared to what Nietzsche terms
“die ganze, lange, schwer zu entziffernde Hieroglyphenschrift
der menschlichen Moral-Vergangenheit”((ZGdM., Preface,
sect.7) Bridgewater, 1974)
- Depiction of the prisoner...
„seiner wulstig aneinander gedrückten
Lippen”
„schwere Ketten“
Symbolism...
How this leads to an existential reading...
‘The whip is thus, historically speaking, itself an archetypal
colonial motif.’ (Peters, 2001)
“Diese Uniformen sind für die Tropen zu schwer,”.....”Aber sie
bedeuten Heimat; wir wollen die Heimat nicht verlieren.”
(Kafka, 1914)
- Schopenhauer’s metaphor for the world as a penal colony:
‘…ist nichts tauglicher, als dass man sich angewöhne, diese
Welt zu betrachten als einen Ort der Buße, also gleichsam als
eine Strafanstalt,’
‘ The machine, the symbol of colonial
power but also of the regime’s internal
contradictions and vulnerability’
(Goebel,2003)
- Kafka’s Strafkolonie as a world without meaning: metaphor
for our world after morality has been proved false and
worthless
‘ The “death” of the colonised as the “life” of the coloniserthis is the very dialectic of Kafka’s apparatus.’ (Peters, 2001)
Bibliography...
-Boa, Elizabeth, ‘The Double Taboo: The Male Body in The Judgement, The Metamorphosis and In
the Penal Colony’ in Kafka: Gender, Class and Race in the Letters and Fictions, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996).
-Bridgewater, Patrick, Kafka and Nietzsche, (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1974).
-Goebel, Rolf J., ‘Kafka and Postcolonial Critique’ in Rolleston, James (ed.), A Companion to the
Works of Franz Kafka, (United States of America: Camden House, 2003).
-Peters, Paul, ‘Witness to the Execution: Kafka and Colonialism’ in Monatshefte, Vol. 93, No. 4
(Winter, 2001), pp. 401-425.
Conclusion...
Acknowledgement of the historical context is important, and
the colonisation of Africa was undoubtedly an influence on
‘In der Strafkolonie’
HOWEVER...
Colonialism was a backdrop for Kafka to explore other, more
abstract ideas within the story, such as Nietzschean concepts of
morality and existentialism
- The system of the Old Commandant, where power was
equated with goodness, has been overthrown
- ‘Ehre deinen Vorgesetzten!’
- The traveller still wants to escape the Strafkolonie at the end