Abstract

Kafka and the Work of Domination Is it reasonable to look for an apprehension of the practices of domination in the œuvre of a writer ? To be more specific, in the writings of Kafka whose short stories and novels are characterised by their formal innovations and their break with the codes of realist narration ? The social and historical analysis of his work clearly demonstrates that Kafka constantly strove to elucidate the mechanisms of the domination which he personally had suffered from , and which he had been able to observe in various professional contexts : the family clothes-shop, the bureaucratic world of an insurance company dealing with accidents at work, the companies he visited as an assessor of the professional risks to which workers were liable through their contact with machines, or the family asbestos factory. Through his representation of a range of situations which are oppressive, alienating, and frequently humiliating, to which the dominated parties participate, involuntarily and frequently unconsciously, Kafka was proceeding with his vast enterprise aimed at self-knowledge and the knowledge of inter-human relations