Advancing the Human Self. Ewa Nowak

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      • He “… laid his head on the handle to open the door wide… but immediately, as he was feeling for a support, he fell down with a little cry upon all his numerous legs” (…) “his legs had firm ground under them; they were completely obedient, as he noted with joy” (««transition experience).

      • “But when at last his head was fortunately right in front of the doorway, it appeared that his body was too broad simply to get through the opening.” “Slowly, awkwardly trying out his feelers, which he now first learned to appreciate, he pushed his way to the door to see what had been happening there” (««transition experience).

      • “For there stood a basin filled with fresh milk (…) he did not like the milk either, although milk had been his favorite drink” (««transition experience).

      • “… his only regret was that his body was too broad to get the whole of it under the sofa. He stayed there all night spending the time partly in a light slumber” (««animal experience).

      • “… a piece of cheese that Gregor would have called uneatable two days ago… Gregor’s legs all whizzed towards the food (…) and [he] sucked greedily at the cheese” (««human and animal experiences confronted).

      • “One after another and with tears of satisfaction in his eyes he quickly devoured the cheese, the vegetables and the sauce; the fresh food, on the other hand, had no charms for him, he could not even stand the smell of it” (««animal experience predominates).

      • “… crawled up over the windowsill (…) in some recollection of the sense of freedom that looking out of a window always used to give him. For in reality day by day things that were even a little way off were growing dimmer to his sight” (t) (««melancholic human mood accompanies becoming non-human).

      • “… about a month after Gregor’s metamorphosis (…) he had formed the habit of crawling crisscross over the walls and ceiling. He especially enjoyed ←40 | 41→hanging suspended from the ceiling; it was much better than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly…” (««non-human experience).

      • “ ‘Come in, he’s out of sight,’ said his sister (…) They were clearing his room out; taking away everything he loved” (estranged and banned from the familiar world) (non-human experience as a radically estranged).

      • “(…) he would certainly be able to crawl unhampered in all directions but at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background?…” (««non-human, traumatic experience).

      • “(…) he [Gregor’s father] lifted his feet uncommonly high, and Gregor was dumbfounded at the enormous size of his shoe soles (…) An apple thrown without much force grazed Gregor’s back and glanced off harmlessly (…) The serious injury done to Gregor” (««human experience, conscious suffering and persecution).

      • “ ‘We must try to get rid of it,’ (…) ‘He must go,’ cried Gregor’s sister, ‘that’s the only solution, Father’ … True, his whole body was aching, but it seemed that the pain was gradually growing less and would finally pass away.” “ ‘And what now?’ said Gregor to himself, looking round in the darkness’ ” (««experience of being out of place in the human world).

      • “Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath” (««non-human existential experience, agony).

      • “(…) the charwoman arrived early in the morning (…) She thought he was lying motionless on purpose (…) her eyes widened (…) ‘Just look at this, it’s dead; it’s lying here dead and done for!’ (…) ‘Dead?’ said Mr. Samsa (…) Indeed, Gregor’s body was completely flat and dry (…) ‘I should say so,’ said the charwoman, proving her words by pushing Gregor’s corpse a long way to one side with her broomstick” (««human consciousness of being perceived and treated as a thing; Freudian impersonal “Es;” reification; annihilation to the brute matter).

      *

The narrative in Metamorphosis is mostly composed of sentences from a first-person perspective, quoted from Kafka’s Metamorphosis and completed by a minimum of additional closely related phrases, with almost no meta-comments. The story reports on several core stages of physical, functional, and mental transition of a young adult male Gregor Samsa from his recent human to his present transhuman condition. One morning he awakes in the form of a huge beetle as a reincarnation of the complete human individual. The order of the narrative ←41 | 42→corresponds to the gradual experiential evidence increasing Gregor Samsa’s certainty about his abrupt, mysterious transfiguration.¹¹⁰

The protagonist wakes up from his dream, in the same way as a patient wakes up from a coma after undergoing an operation: it is finally over, it is a fait accompli. However, this awakening is just the beginning – the beginning of the end, to be exact. The end to which leads the martyr nature of the human ego and identity¹¹¹ confronted with his animal embodiment. That embodiment lacks its natural interactive attitudes. There is a human self locked inside of that, and there the world of the reality of life outside, and all interconnections between the two sides go ignored.

Despite the broad polysemy¹¹² as an integral element of horror of this superficial, physiognomic, but with time also organic, functional, experiential, mental and behavioral degradation of a human imprisoned in a caricaturally huge insect body, it is possible to consider, as part of a mind experiment, Gregor Samsa’s case as an allegory of a radical posthuman experience. However, in this forced experience, nothing leads to the development of his identity and no factors which extended – and literally materialized – Samsa’s self-identity in the ‘ecological’ manner, as the experiential deep ecology theory suggests (post-egoic interrelations with the universe of life, belongingness to the natural oikos, a biotic symbiosis or communion with fellow organic lifeforms, sympathizing with them, etc.). None of these postanthropocentric¹¹³ ideals apply to the Samsa’s experience.

      In contrast, Samsa’s metamorphosis implies a brutal degradation and collapse of his identity. A gradual decline of an “ego” trapped in a body, which in no way resembles Samsa’s original body nor human body. Samsa’s entire identity is inserted into another, primitive living organism, imprisoned and suppressed. ←42 | 43→The new body prevents his previous identity from any kind of manifestation and ability to function in the human world. Living and functioning in a primitive organized bodily microcosmos was a very devastating experience for human beings, Kafka’s message suggests.

At the same time, up until the very end, Samsa deals with the dual-perspective (or at least transitional between his original, i.e., human first-person experiential perspective, and the experiential first-perspective imposition forced on him by his animal embodiment) of his transfiguration: first-person view from within, as a result of a proprioception (as if his former human neural system cooperates with his new animalistic body) and the “clinical”¹¹⁴ view from outside. Later on, Sartre described a very similar experience when thinking about the alienating stare of others when they watch us in the same manner as a naturalist’s eyes a netted insect. Samsa has absolutely no control over his transformation; he is just a passive observer. Instead of being preoccupied with his current life, Samsa mourns over the life he has lost.

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