カフカの『あるアカデミーへの報告』からよむ人間像 : ―ロートペーターのミミクリの破綻と権力の複製性

Abstract

The short story Ein Bericht f?r eine Akademie was written by Franz Kafka in 1917. It was written in the first person, and the protagonist is an ape who came to behave and to think like a human being. When the ape who was named “Rotpeter” was caught by a hunting team in Africa, he was just a wild ape, but the ape decided to mimic human beings by his experience in the transport ship. At last he succeeded in civilized society as a “performer”, and attained some social status. By describing “Rotpeter” who became almost a human being from an ape by mimicry, Kafka succeeded in defining the superficialness of the existence (Dasein) of human beings. This is a story of Kafka’s criticism of the civilization. According to Jean Baudrillard’s The Transparency of Evil, a form of modern evil is based on an increasingly homogenized tendency of society. Has Ein Bericht f?r eine Akademie a similar critical aspect as The Transparency of Evil? On the basis of Baudrillard’s theory of homogeneity, I interpreted the significance of Rotpeter’s mimicry.