Kafka and Learning

“A Report to an Academy” is a short story by Franz Kafka that presents a first-hand narration of an ape’s humanization through learning to speak and behave as an average early 20th century European. Red Peter, who receives his name after a bald red scar he got on his cheek during a hunting expedition, tells the academy how he learned to leave his apehood behind for a way out of captivity. He then confronts the reader with overt examples of ways in which notions of identity appear and are altered in education and growth. Critical of the colonial context that gives Red Peter his new identity of the oppressed and upon which most current Western education systems are built, this research project aims to identify the challenges that a close and informed reading of “A Report to an Academy” brings into the conventional understandings of identity, thus enabling a fight against the impact of colonialism for all who learn, apes or otherwise.