TY - BOOK AU - Robinson,Benjamin Lewis TI - Bureaucratic Fanatics: Modern Literature and the Passions of Rationalization T2 - Paradigms : Literature and the Human Sciences , SN - 9783110595192 AV - BF575.F16 R63 2019 U1 - 352.6/3 23/eng/20230216 PY - 2019///] CY - Berlin, Boston PB - De Gruyter KW - Bureaucracy in literature KW - Bureaucracy KW - Political aspects KW - Fanaticism in literature KW - Rationalism KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / General KW - bisacsh KW - Bureaucratization KW - biopolitics KW - colonialism KW - politics of refusal N1 - 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; Issued also in print N2 - 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 UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110606935 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9783110606935 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9783110606935/original ER -