«Μηχανές, ακριβείς και ευπαθείς»: Γραφειοκρατία και γραφή στον Kafka και τον Καρυωτάκη

Abstract

Since Franz Kafka and Kostas Karyotakis never met or read each other, their relation is not one of “influence” or “reception.” At the same time, one cannot overlook their lines of neighborhood and elusive kinship: both do not only belong to a late modern world of bureaucracy where, according to Kafka, "the chains of tortured humanity are forged of administrative papers;" they are also part of that bureaucratic machine and of Kracauer’s newly emerging class of “salaried employees” or white-collar workers. In fact, their professional work might be considered an essential constituent of bureaucratic biopolitics, applying methods of scaling to individual bodies and populations—be it risk management and insurance (in Kafka's case) or the condemnation of land and refugee accommodation (in the case of Karyotakis).

Accordingly, discursive elements of bureaucracy also permeate and modulate their literary works, from Kafka’s “paper language” [Papierdeutsch] to Karyotakis’ lyrical motifs and the many monsters of “pseudo-rationality.” And bureaucratic biopolitics finds its echo in specific images of the body, its movements or postures. Just as Kafka turns the “bend” or “erect” head of his administrative employees into a sign of what Deleuze/Guattari call “minor literature,” Karyotakis may present us with a “folded body” or “body that is about to rise” to follow an unseen line of flight. By tracing their common paths through the discourse of bureaucracy, one becomes aware of a vague and only partially embodied “family resemblance” between these two mechanized versions of Bartleby, The Scrivener.