Dismodernitet och Insektspolitik : En studie av genus, (o)begriplighet och (dys)funktionalitet i Franz Kafkas Förvandlingen

Sammanfattning:

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka’s ”The Metamorphosis” can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler’s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis’s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional. From this vantage point ”The Metamorphosis” can be seen as an allegory of Dismodernity and the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, can be seen as a political figure of Dismodernity. Therefore, I have tried to draw a feminist insect politics out of his metamorphosis from (hu)man into insect.

By doing a close reading, through the theoretical lenses of Judith Butler, Lennard J. Davis and Donna Haraway, Gregor Samsa can be read as an abject non-masculinity which is both produced and made impossible by a heterosexual matrix’s need of intelligible genders and a capitalist system’s need of functional workers. As an abject non-masculinity Gregor Samsa works as a queer (unintelligible) and dismodern (dysfunctional) trickster that both disturbs and makes visible the established gendered norms of (un)intelligibility and (dis)ability through a blurring of the boundaries between human/animal, public/private and masculinity/femininity. As an involuntary trickster he also challenges gender studies and its seeking for ultimate representations for oppositional consciousness pure in their radical potential.