Awards

• Winner of Best Book in Film Studies 2024 2025

Overview

For all its familiarity as a widely used term, 'Kafkaesque cinema' remains an often-baffling concept that is poorly understood by film scholars. Taking a cue from Jorge Luis Borges' point that Kafka has modified our conception of past and future artists, and Andre Bazin's suggestion that literary concepts and styles can exceed authors and 'novels from which they emanate', this monograph proposes a comprehensive examination of Kafkaesque Cinema in order to understand it as part of a transnational cinematic tradition rooted in Kafka's critique of modernity, which, however, extends beyond the Bohemian author's work and his historical experiences. Drawing on a range of disciplines in the Humanities including film, literary, and theatre studies, critical theory, and history, Kafkaesque Cinema will be the first full-length study of the subject and will be a useful resource for scholars and students interested in film theory, World Cinema, World Literature, and politics and representation.

Full Product Details

Author:   Angelos Koutsourakis (Associate Professor in Film and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.626kg
ISBN:  

9781474498968

ISBN 10:   1474498965
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   31 May 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

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: Шинель (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 Kōbō Abe: Between literature and the Audiovisual Arts 他人の顔 (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 klepsydrą (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: Хрусталёв, машину (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

Reviews

In times when references to the Kafkaesque have become inflationary, Angelos Koutsourakis provides a much-needed re-examination of this term. The scope of his study, which covers global cinema from the 1920s to the present day, is hugely impressive, but crucially, this is not a straightforward reception history. By widening the definition of the Kafkaesque to include Kafka’s cinematic precursors as well as his successors, he deftly shows how this concept can be mobilised in a critical capacity, highlighting film’s pivotal role at the intersections of aesthetics, politics and history. -- Professor Carolin Duttlinger, The University of Oxford Angelos K is guilty … of writing a standout book uncovering the widespread influence of the Kafkaesque on cinema. Remarkable in its insightful originality, Koutsourakis’s engaging analysis skillfully demonstrates how the Kafkaesque perpetually (re-)emerges in film history to critique the historical contradictions of modernity and its attendant crisis of liberalism. This compelling thesis is deftly　woven through a wide range of fascinating examples, as historically rich as they are geographically surprising. The refreshing and unique take on global political cinema found herein is thus a mental salve for a contemporary era of overwork and alienation – conditions which Kafka knew only too well. That is what makes this a must-read book, as it may be all that can save us from waking up to find we have suddenly metamorphosed into giant cockroaches. -- Professor David Martin-Jones, The University of Glasgow Kafkaesque Cinema is impressively erudite and develops an original argument about the transnational impact of Kafka’s writings on cinema, bringing to light hitherto neglected relations, interconnections and long-lasting legacies. -- Jury * The Janovics Center Award for Outstanding Humanities Research in Transnational Film and Theatre Studies * This magnificent monograph is deeply attuned to World-Systemic structures, revealing time and again how, as Koutsourakis notes in the book’s Epilogue, by ‘linking Kafkaesque cinema to the long crisis of liberalism we can understand it as a transnational aesthetic tradition that responds to social processes and relations operating on diverse spatial and temporal levels across the globe’ (p. 271). -- Ian Ellison * Modern Language Review *

Angelos K is guilty ... of writing a standout book uncovering the widespread influence of the Kafkaesque on cinema. Remarkable in its insightful originality, Koutsourakis's engaging analysis skillfully demonstrates how the Kafkaesque perpetually (re-)emerges in film history to critique the historical contradictions of modernity and its attendant crisis of liberalism. This compelling thesis is deftly woven through a wide range of fascinating examples, as historically rich as they are geographically surprising. The refreshing and unique take on global political cinema found herein is thus a mental salve for a contemporary era of overwork and alienation - conditions which Kafka knew only too well. That is what makes this a must-read book, as it may be all that can save us from waking up to find we have suddenly metamorphosed into giant cockroaches.--Professor David Martin-Jones, The University of Glasgow In times when references to the Kafkaesque have become inflationary, Angelos Koutsourakis provides a much-needed re-examination of this term. The scope of his study, which covers global cinema from the 1920s to the present day, is hugely impressive, but crucially, this is not a straightforward reception history. By widening the definition of the Kafkaesque to include Kafka's cinematic precursors as well as his successors, he deftly shows how this concept can be mobilised in a critical capacity, highlighting film's pivotal role at the intersections of aesthetics, politics and history. --Professor Carolin Duttlinger, The University of Oxford

Author Information

Angelos Koutsourakis is Professor in Film and Cultural Studies at the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, University of Leeds. He is the author of Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema (2018), Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (2013) and the co-editor of Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe (2020), and The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015).

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