The Rustle of the Anthropocene: Kafka's Odradek as Ecocritical Icon

This article interrogates the uses and abuses of Franz Kafka's enigmatic figure Odradek as an illustration for three recent approaches in the environmental humanities: Timothy Morton's notion of the hyperobject, Jane Bennett's vital materialism, and J. Hillis Miller's theory of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Germanic review Vol. 92; no. 1; pp. 40 - 62
Main Author Fleishman, Ian Thomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington Routledge 02.01.2017
Taylor & Francis Inc
Subjects
Anthropocene
Climate change
Czech literature
Ecocriticism
Franz Kafka
J. Hillis Miller
Jane Bennett
Jewish literature
Kafka, Franz (1883-1924)
Literary criticism
Odradek
Timothy Morton
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Summary:This article interrogates the uses and abuses of Franz Kafka's enigmatic figure Odradek as an illustration for three recent approaches in the environmental humanities: Timothy Morton's notion of the hyperobject, Jane Bennett's vital materialism, and J. Hillis Miller's theory of the ecotechnological. Putting pressure on the consonances and dissonances between these concepts will reveal an implicit attempt to make of Odradek an idiom capable of conceptualizing the forces of a climate change exceeding current modes of thought.
ISSN:0016-8890
1930-6962
DOI:10.1080/00168890.2016.1239059