Kafka’s A Crossbreed:

A Postmodern Cultural Critique of Pet Keeping

Abstract

This work endeavours an elliptical reading of Franz Kafka’s A Crossbreed, to critique the
postmodern culture that subtends pet keeping, subsequently unpacking Kafka’s contribution to
animal ethics. The research question is: What unjust structures subtend postmodern cultural
practices of pet–keeping that are implied in the story? This critique considers that Kafka’s story
intends an animal ethics. This is primarily supported by the author’s reputation in biographical
accounts of his life as being sensitive to the miserable plight of animals. This question will be
addressed in three parts. The first discusses the aesthetic category of ‘cute’ from Lorenz’s idea
of Kindchenschema, identifying it in the crossbreed’s physiology and behaviours. It then
exposes the grim background of the cultural fetish of ‘cute’ that arises in societies within the
grip of political regimentation, which gave rise to pet keeping as a therapy. It also motivated the
selection as well as rejection of pets on the basis of mere physical looks. The second delves into
the tactile phenomenology and psychology of ‘petting,’ revealing the ambivalence about the
ethical issue of care in exchange for anthropogenically initiated animal domestication. The third
focuses on the haunting question of the end–of–life disposal of the crossbreed, which is somewhat linked to the cognitive dissonance on the issue of meat and the moral status of the pet animal.