WRITING ON THE WALL: BENJAMIN, KAFKA, BORGES, AND THE CHINESE IMAGINARY

Authors

  • CARLOS ROJAS

Keywords:

Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari, Minor Literature, China

Abstract

Using Kafka’s short story “The Great Wall of China” as a starting point, this essay examines the ways in which a dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, construction and destruction, have been deployed in discussions of identity and difference. In particular, I argue that even as Walter Benjamin uses Kafka as a starting point to reflect on how the West imagines China as a space of radical alterity, Kafka’s own Great Wall story is interested instead in how China conceives its relationship to its own strategic Other, which in turn offers a model for how we might understand the West itself.

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Published

2015-07-31

How to Cite

ROJAS, C. (2015). WRITING ON THE WALL: BENJAMIN, KAFKA, BORGES, AND THE CHINESE IMAGINARY. 452ºF. Revista De Teoría De La Literatura Y Literatura Comparada, (13), 71–81. Retrieved from https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/452f/article/view/14132

Issue

No. 13 (2015): Chinese Imaginary in Other Literatures: Inspiration, Appropriation and Intertextuality

Section

Monograph

License

All contents published in the journal are protected under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. This corresponds to legislation within Spain, and does not allow commercial use of the texts. It is not possible to modify the contents either.

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Comparative Literature magazine 452ºF [ISSN 2013-3294] is a publishing project coordinated by Asociación Cultural 452ºF, and developed by its Editorial board.



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