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Bureaucratic Fanatics : Modern Literature and the Passions of Rationalization / Benjamin Lewis Robinson.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Paradigms : Literature and the Human Sciences ; 8Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2019]Copyright date: ©2019Description: 1 online resource (XII, 272 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110595192
  • 9783110606041
  • 9783110606935
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 352.6/3 23/eng/20230216
LOC classification:
  • BF575.F16 R63 2019
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Bureaucratic Fanaticism -- 2. A New Kind of Schwärmer: Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas -- 3. Architecture of the Office: Melville’s Bartleby -- 4. Abstraction of the Earth: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness -- 5. Poverty of Agency: Conrad’s The Secret Agent -- 6. State of Embarrassment: Kafka’s In the Penal Colony -- 7. Society of Security: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis -- Epilogue: Guerrilla / Gardener Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Is justice only achievable by means of bureaucratization or might it first arrive with the end of bureaucracy? Bureaucratic Fanatics shows how this ever more contentious question in contemporary politics belongs to the political-theological underpinnings of bureaucratization itself. At the end of the 18th century, a new and paradoxical kind of fanaticism emerged - rational fanaticism - that propelled the intensive biopolitical management of everyday life in Europe and North America as well as the extensive colonial exploitation of the earth and its peoples. These excesses of bureaucratization incited in turn increasingly fanatical forms of resistance. And they inspired literary production that provocatively presented the outrageous contours of rationalization. Combining political theory with readings of Kleist, Melville, Conrad, and Kafka, this genealogy of bureaucratic fanaticism relates two extreme figures: fanatical bureaucrats driven to the ends of the earth and to the limits of humanity by the rationality of the apparatuses they serve; and peculiar fanatics who passionately, albeit seemingly passively, resist the encroachments of bureaucratization.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9783110606935

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Bureaucratic Fanaticism -- 2. A New Kind of Schwärmer: Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas -- 3. Architecture of the Office: Melville’s Bartleby -- 4. Abstraction of the Earth: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness -- 5. Poverty of Agency: Conrad’s The Secret Agent -- 6. State of Embarrassment: Kafka’s In the Penal Colony -- 7. Society of Security: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis -- Epilogue: Guerrilla / Gardener Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Is justice only achievable by means of bureaucratization or might it first arrive with the end of bureaucracy? Bureaucratic Fanatics shows how this ever more contentious question in contemporary politics belongs to the political-theological underpinnings of bureaucratization itself. At the end of the 18th century, a new and paradoxical kind of fanaticism emerged - rational fanaticism - that propelled the intensive biopolitical management of everyday life in Europe and North America as well as the extensive colonial exploitation of the earth and its peoples. These excesses of bureaucratization incited in turn increasingly fanatical forms of resistance. And they inspired literary production that provocatively presented the outrageous contours of rationalization. Combining political theory with readings of Kleist, Melville, Conrad, and Kafka, this genealogy of bureaucratic fanaticism relates two extreme figures: fanatical bureaucrats driven to the ends of the earth and to the limits of humanity by the rationality of the apparatuses they serve; and peculiar fanatics who passionately, albeit seemingly passively, resist the encroachments of bureaucratization.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Jun 2024)