Para além da Colônia Penal: corpos metamórficos e poética da insubmissão em A ponte, O novo advogado, Um relatório para uma academia e A metamorfose, de Franz Kafka

Abstract

In recent decades, a fruitful debate concerning the connection and interrelation between the theme of the body and other fields of knowledge has reached modernity and contemporaneity, presenting increasingly dense levels of complexity. To further explore the problematic nature of the boundaries crossing discussions about the body, and to incorporate inquiries that rekindle the theme of metamorphoses, this study seeks—through the lens of insubmission—to analyze the concept of polysystems applied to literary analysis. Franz Kafka, whose literary production is situated within the context of modernity and contemporaneity, updates the theme of metamorphoses, placing special emphasis on the nature of the body and its ramifications as body/individual and body/society. The literary corpus of this research comprises the following texts by Franz Kafka: The Bridge, The New Advocate, A Report to an Academy, and The Metamorphosis. This study aims to analyze the compositional elements of these texts to establish a dialogue between the theme of the body and the legal issues raised throughout the narratives. The objective is to investigate how metamorphoses, as a literary device, aid in understanding fundamental aspects of the selected short stories, while also searching reader reception for evidence of a critique grounded in the confrontation between the logic of the body, formal logic, and/or the logic of the legal order. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the connection between the literary corpus and the question of the absurd regarding the situations experienced by the characters. The analysis highlights situations of resignation and a suffocating paralysis experienced by the characters in the face of events. Beyond perplexity, readers and researchers are left with the following question: what reasons compel them to endure such absurd conditions? In the essay Franz Kafka: Subversive Dreamer(2005), Michael Löwy asserts that the corpus engenders a critical dimension toward social structure and bureaucracy, revealing an insubmissive worldview through the metamorphosis of the characters. The methodological framework of this research, anchored in qualitative literary analysis, is based on a critical reading of the selected texts in dialogue with theoretical-critical references on Franz Kafka. The structure of this work is organized into the following axes: First, Second, Third, and Fourth Movements, which are interconnected by the theme and object of the research. The term "movement" chosen for the sections of this investigation also aims to emphasize the metamorphic nature of the dissertation’s own body (text), given that "movement" is a physics concept describing when a body changes its position relative to a frame of reference over a certain time interval. It is precisely this phenomenon that occurs during the reading of a text: there is a body in motion, and therefore, a metamorphosis of both the body of the text and the body of the reader