You can kill a person, but you can't force them to be something else. (Robert Antelme)
How, when and why do we stop looking at the Other as a person? In the very core of Franz Kafka's work, one can always sense the different forms of dehumanization under consideration. The story of Gregor Zamzas, who has turned into an insect, raises the question of what are the limits of our compassion for the Other: how the process of identification takes place, how the Other is constructed, whether we are able to accept the Other as a part of humanity. This performance will aim to examine the complex dialectical relationship between two different political (in the broadest sense) mechanisms: empathic identification on the one hand, and dehumanization on the other.
The field of meanings in Kafka's works is extremely wide and does not lend itself to simple, unambiguous interpretations. In order to open up their different levels, the most important thing in the play is to build a dialogue with the reality in which we live.
in 1914 July 28 the First World War began, and just a few days later F. Kafka began writing perhaps her most famous novel, The Trial (which remained unfinished and was published without the author's permission only after her death). And although these two events are not connected by mutual causality, the war experience is evident both in this and in other works of the writer. Scholars of Kafka's work say that in The Process he foresaw the totalitarian ideologies that would soon engulf Europe, and also foretold the nature of that war. February 24 When Russia started a war against Ukraine, it was said that this war would start the next stage of European history, and introduce a new world order. So it is possible that we too, in the 21st century. Ten of the 3rd. Europeans, like Kafka, who became a contemporary of the First World War, will live through a turning point, after which a new order will prevail in the world.
