Bare Bodies, Strange Machines, Military Operations, and Technical Language in Kafka’s ‘In der Strafkolonie’ and Beckett’s ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ and ‘Ping’

This article compares three texts by Kafka and Beckett each using conspicuously technical language to refer to the constraint of bare human bodies in some machine-like apparatus/space. While the texts may be read as ironic comments on the mechanized brutality of war and oppression in the twentieth century, the broader targets of the irony come into focus when they are juxtaposed with the writings of Weber, Adorno, Marcuse, Foucault, Agamben, and Bauman. The article explores in particular the similarities in the ironic use of technical and bureaucratic language in these short literary pieces.