Kafka’s Oblivion

Kafka delineates in many of his texts seemingly incidental scenes of forgetting. Upon closer examination, though, this oblivion is highly symptomatic. It indicates no less than the fragile and precarious constitution of modernity. Forgetting constitutes its condition of knowledge, forgetting its mode of remembrance. Kafka’s writings stage this forgetting in various forms, and the aim of this lecture is to illustrate them in terms of rhetorical forgetting, social forgetting, and Western-Jewish forgetting.

This lecture is open to the public. A small reception will follow the lecture. For more information, please email Professor David Kim at dkim@humnet.ucla.edu or call (310)825-3604.

Andreas Kilcher (ETH Zurich)

Professor Dr. Andreas Kilcher is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the ETH Zurich. He has been a distinguished visiting professor at universities around the globe, including the Hebrew University, Princeton, and Stanford. His publications include, among others, Franz Kafka (2008), Max Frisch (2011), Potik und Politik des Witzers bei Heinrich Heine (2014) and Writing Jewish Culture (co-edited with Gabriella Safran, 2016).