Representation and body politics in Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and In the Penal Colony

Abstract

This present research deals with the Representation and Body Politics in Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and In the Penal Colony. Besides,this paper explores the commonalities and differences of these stories to show how and why the characters bring the body centrality into question. In the stories entitled A Hunger Artist and In the Penal Colony, Kafka takes the characters’ body to interrogate the Socio-historical normativity. In these both stories, the connection of the consciousness with the bodies is justified by the characters. . A Hunger Artist brings into the ideas of fasting and its effects on the central character. And In the Penal Colony the protagonist connects to the notion of punishment with body of both the doomed man and the officer who go through the thrilling forms of bodily torture. To show how the condition of the body is miserable and the condition of the body is presented in a brutal manner is the overall focus of this research. Theoretical insight of Michael Foucault, Hayden White, Catherine Gallagher and Greenblatt are taken as the major supportive tools to justify the claim of the researcher.