Praktiken intertextuellen Recyclings bei Achmat Dangor, Rawi Hage und Igoni Barrett

The present essay is meant as a response to the challenge posed by the title of the present collection: „Die Ästhetik der Deponie“. The title refers to the materiality of things thrown away: how they are accumulated, used or re-used and disposed of. However, on this occasion, I would leave material ecocriticism aside, and I would rather concentrate on specific narratives in which an individual is equated to waste. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is certainly an illustrious and exemplary author to begin with in order to discuss this specific narrative representation of biopolitics and necropolitics (Mbembe 2003). Moreover, the purpose of this essay is to analyze and demonstrate how Kafka’s texts undergo a process of „Rie-Naturieung“ or re-naturalization, and re-generation; of intertextual recycling and re-birth in other cultures, languages, literatures, and nationalities, particularly within the field of anglophone postcolonial literature: Achmat Dangor's Kafka's Curse; Ravi Hage's Cockroach, Igoni Barrett's Black Ass.