List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on the Text Introduction The Kafkaesque Beyond Kafka What we Know: Literature on Kafka and the Kafkaesque in Film Studies Kafkaesque Cinema and the Crisis of Liberalism in its Longue Durée Part I: ''Modernity''s Objective Spirit'' Chapter 1: Anxious Humour and Alienating Labour Prelude: The Chaplinesque and the Kafkaesque Alienating Labour: ( The Overcoat , 1926) and Modern Times (1936) Bullshit Jobs: Il Posto ( The Job , 1961) Chapter 2: Bureaucracy Prelude: Bureaucracy and Violence Stalinist Depoliticisation: Postava k podpírání ( Joseph Kilián , 1963) Post-Revolutionary Contradictions: La muerte de un burócrata ( Death of a Bureaucrat , 1966) ''The New Class of Administrators'': Mandabi ( The Money Order , 1968) Chapter 3: Social Alienation Prelude: Modernism''s Reaction to Liberal Individualism Post-War Repression: Jonas (1957) Memories from the Repressed Past Kobo Abe: Between literature and the Audiovisual Arts ( The Face of Another , 1966): Hiroshi Teshigahara''s Adaptation of Abe''s Homonymous Text Chapter 4: The Work of Art as Alienating Labour: Barton Fink (1991) and the End of Jewish Modernity Jewish Modernity: Some Introductory Remarks Barton Fink (1991): Clifford Odets and the Estranged Artist ''Assimilation''? Part II: Fascism and its Legacies Chapter 5: Fernando Arrabal and the Persistence of the Spanish Civil War Prelude: The Spanish Civil War and the Crisis of Anti-fascism Baal Babylonia ''s ( Baal Babylon , 1959) Visual Dramaturgy and its Transposition to Film: Viva La Muerte ( Long Live Death , 1971) Cruelty as Protest: L''arbre de Guernica ( The Tree of Guernica , 1975) Chapter 6: Memories from the Holocaust in Central Europe Prelude: Central/Eastern Europe and the Holocaust Tragicomedy in Obchod na korze ( The Shop on Main Street , 1965) Some Notes on Bruno Schulz, the Polish Kafka Theatre of Death: Sanatorium pod klepsydra ( The Hourglass Sanatorium , 1973) Chapter 7: Parables of Underdevelopment Prelude: Kafkaesque Cinema and Enforced Underdevelopment A City under Siege: Invasión (1969) Invasión ''s Afterlives Neocolonial Conditions of Existence: Raúl Ruiz''s La colonia penal ( The Penal Colony , 1970) Part III: Stalinist Terror Chapter 8: Memories from the Rákosi Era Prelude: The Minor and the Kafkaesque Self-Renunciations: Hannibál tanár úr ( Professor Hannibal , 1956) Laughing at the Rákosi Era: A tanú ( The Witness , 1969) Chapter 9: Politicising the Absurd Prelude: Beyond the Existentialist Understanding of the Absurd Late Modernist Language Scepticism: O slavnosti a hostech ( A Report on the Party and the Guests , 1966) Surveillance Anxieties: Ucho ( The Ear , 1970) Chapter 10: Jewish Purges Prelude: Jewish Purges in the Soviet Bloc Kafkaesque Realism: Artur London''s Testimony Suspended Time: L''aveu (The Confession, 1970) The Doctor''s Plot: , ( Khrustalyov, My Car! , 1998) Part IV: Late Capitalist Contradictions Chapter 11: Behaviourist Surveillance Introduction: Surveillance as a Feature of Modernity The Prison Industrial Complex: Ghosts . of the Civil Dead (1988) Surveillance Capitalism: Some Key Definitions Consumer Behaviourism: Paranoia 1.0 (2004) Chapter 12: Post-Fascism Prelude: Counter-Enlightenment in Contemporary Liberal Societies The Curves of Time: La Jetée (1962) Belated Style in Béla Tarr''s Werckmeister harmóniák ( Werckmeister Harmonies , 2000) Transit (2018): Anna Seghers''s Anti-Fascism Revisited Chapter 13: The Anthropocene Crisis On the Anthropocene The Multiple Temporalities of Colonial Modernity: Die Parallelstraße ( The Parallel Street , 1962) ''What if Spring did not Come?'' La Cinquième Saison ( The Fifth Season , 2012) Epilogue Bibliography Index.