Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ Is the Anti-Manual the Resistance Should Read
The rampant misuse of “Kafkaesque” reveals an ugly truth about our acceptance of widespread abuses of power.
What, exactly, is “Kafkaesque”?
Photographer: Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
After handing in to the publisher my Russian translation of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” I feel as if I’m being stalked by an adjective: “Kafkaesque.” Depending on how you define it, it’s either one of the most misused or most relevant words in today’s world.
In recent days, “Kafkaesque” has been applied to the YouTube meme of a lawyer appearing in Zoom court in a virtual cat mask, the story of an Indian shepherd imprisoned in Pakistan for alleged spying, an immigration case in Australia, the general state of affairs in Sri Lanka, the idea of turning Czech pubs into political party offices so they couldn’t be closed as part of the Covid lockdown, the mistreatment of an Albuquerque high schooler by local police, a jail sentence for an investigative journalist in Montenegro and — by the French foreign minister — to the jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny immediately upon his return to Russia after being treated in Germany for poisoning.