kafka’s “great wall of china” a parable of hegemony and “nation

Kafka’s “Great Wall of China”: a Parable

of Hegemony and “Nation Building”

Posted on March 24, 2013

[Initially written for and carried in The Nation]

Written in 1917 and first published posthumously in 1931, Franz Kafka’s short story ‘The

Great Wall of China’ is an intriguing parable on “nation building”. The story unfolds as a

reflection of a mason who had been employed in the construction of the Great Wall – a

fortress, as everyone was told, which was meant to hold off the “Northern invaders” – and of

how the project had been executed over the years. The narrator, in retrospection, tells us that

the wall was always built in piecemeal portions, one labor gang given the feasible task of

building a hundred feet of the wall for a five year period. At the end of five years, the labor

unit is transferred – and as they are relocated, they would go past other partially built

segments of the wall (which, though incomplete) would bear witness to the substance of the

laborers’ dedicated effort; and which would kindle them into “believing” in the grand project of

which they are a part.

The wall, which is never completed and built in

piecemeal segments, is a metaphor for the

“nation building” processes which enslave the

energy and the consciousness of the masses.

The Mason in the story, therefore, is a

representative of the citizen’s psyche, which

has been subjected and hegemonically

arrested by the state. We are told by the

narrator that the foundation of the Great Wall

was laid about fifty years prior to the actual

program – when the government declared

masonry as the most crucial vocation in the

country. The narrator records how the lives of

the people and their career aspirations

changed, where schools of masonry and

masons became the lynchpins of society.

Franz Kafka—

Heathcliff PapersBearing my Thrushcross

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The metaphoric value of the masons and masonry are not lost on our contemporary society

either – where, through carefully meditated militarization, the state has rearranged the

definitions and allowances of civil society. In the closing stages of the North-East Civil War

and in its immediate aftermath, the only vocation of mileage was the office of the “patriotic”.

The soldier – elevated to Homeric heights as the infallible executioner of the “nation-bound”

values of the “nation-loving” government – was set as a default by whom everyone had to

prostrate. The narrator of Kafka’s short story makes a very crucial observation: if the state’s

prerogative was to wade off the Northern invaders – of whom many grotesque and demonic

pictures have been drilled into the populace through school and education – why did they

administer the wall’s construction in sections, with gaps everywhere?

Akin to the “nation building” machinery, the wall, too, has meaning only if partially constructed

and left inconclusive. For example, if the government’s developmental operations are to end

at a particular destination one loses hegemony. The mustering of a “national consciousness”

towards a “national goal” is dependent on the painting and promise of colorful dreams and

enigmas of sorts. If the project is to cease with the “Southern Highway”, that politician has

failed. One has to therefore extend the Southern Highway and have it off shoot into a whole

network of highways that will connect all nooks and corners of Lanka in one unceasing

channel.

If the “building of the nation”

entails the subjugation and

contortion of an “enemy”, that

enemy is best kept fluid and

vague as the “invaders from the

North” are in Kafka’s story. Here,

the narrator has never seen the

invaders infiltrate the gaps of the

partly built wall, nor seen them in

any concrete form, except for

how they are drilled into the

collective citizen psyche. Being

fluid and faceless, the “enemy”

will take the form of the

receptacle to which he is put. The “fear of invasion” by the Tamil nation was used to such

xenophobic lengths in post-independence Sri Lanka that successive governments could bend

the minds of the Sinhala majority with it and use it as a shield to sustain their hegemony and

other megalomania. Similarly, a “fear of invasion” by the Muslim identity is now being pumped

and fuelled by elements which we can safely assume to have VIP patronage and sanction.

What we see here is the bid to keep the “enemy” alive, or – in the context of Kafka’s story –

to keep the wall from being completed. If the wall is concluded, the state cannot resort to the

threat of that illusive “northern invader” anymore.

Kafka’s ‘The Great Wall of China’ is also preoccupied with the question as to “what is a

nation”. In the second half of the narrative – which is popularly known as “A Message from

the Emperor” – the narrator focuses on the vagueness and uncertainty of “national”

boundaries. Akin to the mainstay of Kafka’s better known fiction, it is a revealing study of the

From Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”—


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ONE THOUGHT ON “KAFKA’S “GREAT WALL OF CHINA”: A PARABLE OF HEGEMONY AND “NATION BUILDING””

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distance between the actual administrative centre and the community’s margins (and vice

versa). The message which is sent by the Emperor, the narrator argues, cannot reach the

furthest end of the realm – for how could it with the messenger having so much ground to

cover and merely his feet to carry him? The point is that the “message” would always be

“outdated” or “deferred”. The Emperor, for his part, has technically issued a message; but, as

to whether that message will be received by society at all is not guaranteed. For instance,

there can be a presidential guarantee of “equality of the constitution” for all persons. But, this

is just a “message from the Emperor”. Some parts of the community never receive that

message; or, the message is never believed when received for it doesn’t resonate as true.

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docent

on April 2, 2013 at 3:08 am said:

Reblogged this on The Docent and commented:

The Nation originally submitted Sunday, 24 March 2013 this analysis of Franz Kafka’s

short story “The Great Wall of China”, written 1917. An excellent translation of the


3 of 4 1/14/2014 11:59 PM

original text can be found here:

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/greatwallofchina.htm

Happy reading!

-The Docent


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kafka’s “great wall of china” a parable of hegemony and “nation

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