Abstract

The "Report to an Academy" narrates a curious situation: an ape presents (or rather, performs) a report to an academy. What he presents is an autobiography. Like so much in Kafka, the "Report" is a parable about writing in general and about the writer's identity in particular. This essay attempts to address these issues through a close reading of Kafka's text against Blanchot's L'espace littéraire. Central to this endeavour is an analysis of the ape's use of the first-person pronoun as someone who fashions himself while, at the same time, presenting a theatrical autobiography featuring the self in question. My reading then moves on to analyze the act of writing as a negotiation of the passage between self and other, framed as it is by the theatrical context of Kafka's parable.

Keywords: Report to an Academy, Kafka, ape, presents, performs, autobiography, Report, parable, writing, writer's identity, particular, Blanchot, L'espace littéraire, first-person pronoun, theatrical autobiography, self, narrator, negotiation, other

How to Cite:

Elmarsafy, Z., (1995) “Aping the Ape: Kafka's "Report to an Academy"”, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 19(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1368