POSTCARD III (SW)
In his critical reflection ‘Man-Moth Tongue,’ Lai Kin Hang elucidates the manner in which the “alien” nature of the insectoid face renders it unrelatable, and subsequently less valuable, to humanity. This idea is illustrated by Hang’s claim that human beings rarely mourn the death of mosquitoes. However, conversely, the animosity and apathy that characters of the insect world and other “alien” environmental forms engender in humans could be deduced as an anthropocentric defence mechanism against the intrinsic power of these entities in scripting and structuring contemporary life. When reading ecocritical scholar Jane Bennett’s 2004 essay The Force of Things, I discovered twentieth century modernist writer Franz Kafka’s short story The Cares of a Family Man (1914-1917) in which a speaking spool of thread named Odrakek produces “spontaneous structural generation” (Bennett, 2004, p. 352) in a family. French philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower, entailing “precise controls and comprehensive regulations” (Adams, 2017) of human bodies can be employed to fathom the extent to which Odrakek transcends into an eco-skeleton that scripts the social sphere of Kafka’s human characters. An example of this is the patriarch’s fear that Odrakek, who incessantly “lurks”, will outlive him through his admission “that he is likely survive me I find almost painful.” (Kafka, 1914-1917) The father’s fear corresponds with the elusive nature of Odrakek, who “is as wooden as his appearance” and “can never be laid hold of” (Kafka, 1914-1917), thereby demonstrating how humanity’s perception of certain features of environmental and material spheres as alien and unrelatable could merely be a product of these discomforting elements’ autonomous, looming presence in everyday contemporary life.
REFERENCES
Adams, R. (2017, May 10). Michael Foucault: Biopolitics and Biopower [blog post]. Retrieved 17 October 2018, from http://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/05/10/michel-foucault-biopolitics-biopower/
Bennett, J. (2004). The Force of Things: Steps toward an Ecology of Matter, 32(3), 347-372. doi: 10.1177/0090591703260853
Kafka, F. (1914-1917). The Cares of a Family Man (Die Sorge des Hausvaters), Retrieved from https://livelongday.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/odradek.pdf
SW.