Kafka’s Legacy in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians
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This study examines the ethical and aesthetic dialogue between Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee, focusing on Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) in relation to Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” and “Building the Great Wall of China.” Both authors investigate how literature can simultaneously represent and dismantle the language of power. While Kafka reveals the mechanisms of law and empire through negative allegory—the exposure of meaning’s failure—Coetzee transposes this structure into the colonial context, transforming the allegory of inscription into one of erasure. The study argues that Coetzee’s “creative misreading” of Kafka converts metaphysical negation into an ethics of unknowingness: a moral stance grounded in silence, witnessing, and the impossibility of full understanding. Analyzing the parallels between Kafka’s torture machine and Coetzee’s “ritual of the washing,” it shows how both writers translate the collapse of meaning into ethical recognition. Where Kafka’s allegory ends with the destruction of the law’s writing, Coetzee begins with the impossibility of reading the Other’s pain. Thus, Coetzee’s engagement with Kafka redefines allegory as an ethical practice rather than a symbolic code, shifting from representation to listening. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that Coetzee inherits Kafka’s legacy not through imitation but through transformation—recasting the violence of inscription as a postcolonial ethics of witnessing. In doing so, both writers reveal literature’s enduring responsibility: to confront the limits of language while bearing witness to suffering.
Abstract
This study examines the ethical and aesthetic dialogue between Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee, focusing on Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) in relation to Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” and “Building the Great Wall of China.” Both authors investigate how literature can simultaneously represent and dismantle the language of power. While Kafka reveals the mechanisms of law and empire through negative allegory—the exposure of meaning’s failure—Coetzee transposes this structure into the colonial context, transforming the allegory of inscription into one of erasure. The study argues that Coetzee’s “creative misreading” of Kafka converts metaphysical negation into an ethics of unknowingness: a moral stance grounded in silence, witnessing, and the impossibility of full understanding. Analyzing the parallels between Kafka’s torture machine and Coetzee’s “ritual of the washing,” it shows how both writers translate the collapse of meaning into ethical recognition. Where Kafka’s allegory ends with the destruction of the law’s writing, Coetzee begins with the impossibility of reading the Other’s pain. Thus, Coetzee’s engagement with Kafka redefines allegory as an ethical practice rather than a symbolic code, shifting from representation to listening. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that Coetzee inherits Kafka’s legacy not through imitation but through transformation—recasting the violence of inscription as a postcolonial ethics of witnessing. In doing so, both writers reveal literature’s enduring responsibility: to confront the limits of language while bearing witness to suffering.