PhD completion seminar: The Performance of Perversion in Kafka's Literature and its Happenings

An open invitation to join Davide Cerfeda at his PhD completion seminar: The Performance of Perversion in Kafka's Literature and its Happenings

The interpretation of Kafka's literature has always presented major problems for critics, so, starting from the view of Kafka's perversions as logical absurdities in a specific time and place, this thesis interrogates their role as a dominant element in Kafka's poetics. I argue that performativity and performance are central to representations of perversion in Kafka and its effects over the fictional characters.
I use a predominantly psychoanalytic approach to Kafka’s life and a post-structuralist analysis of his stories and their filmic and theatrical adaptations.

The frequent perverted elements and the predominance of perverse performances, particularly revealed through the presence and need of an audience, abound in Kafka's literature, but here I focus on gender, animality and Law. I argue that gender, animality and law/punishment are strictly connected by the need for a performance to define them. My work establishes perversion as the originating factor of Kafka's narrative. His intent is to challenge standards by performing their perversion and showing how this has nefarious consequences only when an audience is present. If there were no performative expectations based on arbitrary standards, there would be no perversions to confuse and shock the audience and no punishment would be needed for the perverted individuals.

Date: Friday, 27 April, 2018
Time: 3pm - 4.30pm as part of The University of Melbourne - Monash German seminar series
Location: Room 506, Babel (Building 139)