Kafka’s A Crossbreed: A Postmodern Cultural Critique of Pet Keeping

Abstract

This work endeavours an elliptical reading of Franz Kafka’s A Crossbreed, to critique the postmodern culture that subtends pet keeping, subsequently unpacking Kafka’s contribution to animal ethics. The research question is: What unjust structures underpin the postmodern cultural practices of pet–keeping implied in the story? This critique argues that Kafka’s story intends to advance an animal ethics. This is primarily supported by the author’s reputation in biographical accounts of his life as being sensitive to the miserable plight of animals. This question will be addressed in three parts. The first discusses the aesthetic category of ‘cute’ from Lorenz’s idea
of Kindchenschema, identifying it in the crossbreed’s physiology and behaviours. It then exposes the grim background of the cultural fetish of ‘cute’ that arises in societies within the grip of political regimentation, which gave rise to pet keeping as a therapy. It also motivated the selection and rejection of pets on the basis of mere physical appearance. The second delves into the tactile phenomenology and psychology of ‘petting,’ revealing the ambivalence about the ethical issue of care in exchange for anthropogenically initiated animal domestication. The third focuses on the haunting question of the end–of–life disposal of the crossbreed, which is somewhat linked to cognitive dissonance over the issue of meat and the moral status of the pet animal.