Humanities

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20 pages, 266 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Code Word Cloud in Franz Kafka’s “Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer” [“The Great Wall of China”]

by Alex Mentzel

Humanities 2025, 14(4), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14040073 - 25 Mar 2025

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Amidst the centenary reflections on Franz Kafka’s legacy, this article explores his work’s ongoing resonance with the digital age, particularly through the lens of generative AI and cloud computation. Anchored in a close reading of Kafka’s “Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer”, this study [...] Read more.

Amidst the centenary reflections on Franz Kafka’s legacy, this article explores his work’s ongoing resonance with the digital age, particularly through the lens of generative AI and cloud computation. Anchored in a close reading of Kafka’s “Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer”, this study interrogates how the spatial and temporal codes embedded in the narrative parallel the architectures of contemporary diffusion systems at the heart of AI models. Engaging with critical theory, media archaeology, and AI discourse, this article argues that the rise of large language models not only commodifies language but also recasts Kafka’s allegorical critiques of bureaucratic opacity and imperial command structures within a digital framework. The analysis leverages concepts like Kittler’s code, Benjamin’s figural cloud, and Hamacher’s linguistic dissemblance to position Kafka’s parables as proto-critical tools for examining AI’s black-box nature. Ultimately, the piece contends that Kafka’s text is less a metaphor for our technological present than a mirror reflecting the epistemological crises engendered by the collapse of semantic transparency in the era of algorithmic communication. This reframing invites a rethinking of how narrative, code, and digital architectures intersect, complicating our assumptions about clarity, control, and the digital regimes shaping contemporary culture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

16 pages, 1051 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Kafka’s Literary Style: A Mixed-Method Approach

by Carsten Strathausen, Wenyi Shang and Andrei Kazakov

Humanities 2025, 14(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030061 - 12 Mar 2025

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Abstract

In this essay, we examine how the polyvalence of meaning in Kafka’s texts is engineered both semantically (on the narrative level) and syntactically (on the linguistic level), and we ask whether a computational approach can shed new light on the long-standing debate about [...] Read more.

In this essay, we examine how the polyvalence of meaning in Kafka’s texts is engineered both semantically (on the narrative level) and syntactically (on the linguistic level), and we ask whether a computational approach can shed new light on the long-standing debate about the major characteristics of Kafka’s literary style. A mixed-method approach means that we seek out points of connection that interlink traditional humanist (i.e., interpretative) and computational (i.e., quantitative) methods of investigation. Following the introduction, the second section of our article provides a critical overview of the existing scholarship from both a humanist and a computational perspective. We argue that the main methodological difference between traditional humanist and AI-enhanced computational studies of Kafka’s literary style lies not in the use of statistics but in the new interpretative possibilities enabled by AI methods to explore stylistic features beyond the scope of human comprehension. In the third and fourth sections of our article, we will introduce our own stylometric approach to Kafka, detail our methods, and interpret our findings. Rather than focusing on training an AI model capable of accurately attributing authorship to Kafka, we examine whether AI could help us detect significant stylistic differences between the writing Kafka himself published during his lifetime (Kafka Core) and his posthumous writings edited and published by Max Brod. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

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13 pages, 224 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Franz Kafka’s “Das Urteil” (1913) as Media History: Writing–Cinema–AI

by Artun Ak

Humanities 2025, 14(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030057 - 11 Mar 2025

Viewed by 546

Abstract

In this essay, I read Kafka’s 1913 story, “Das Urteil”, as positing an anachronistic media history, with Georg the son representing the older medium of writing, while his father stands in for the newer medium of cinema. The father–son conflict is thus refigured [...] Read more.

In this essay, I read Kafka’s 1913 story, “Das Urteil”, as positing an anachronistic media history, with Georg the son representing the older medium of writing, while his father stands in for the newer medium of cinema. The father–son conflict is thus refigured as an intergenerational media war. In addition, I suggest that the end of the story points toward a non-human mediation, which resembles artificial intelligence as imagined by Friedrich Kittler’s media theory. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

32 pages, 429 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Alienation, Synchronization, Imitation: Kafka, Then and Now

by Wolf Kittler

Humanities 2025, 14(3), 47; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030047 - 28 Feb 2025

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Abstract

In this article, I have tried to measure the distance that separates us from Kafka by trying to register both the things that we still have in common with him and his time, and the many things that have changed in between. The [...] Read more.

In this article, I have tried to measure the distance that separates us from Kafka by trying to register both the things that we still have in common with him and his time, and the many things that have changed in between. The first section is an analysis of the story “A Visit to a Mine” in terms of the new accident prevention techniques instituted by the welfare state at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. The second section deals with the new concepts of time and space that emerged in the age of electric and electro-magnetic media. And the third section is an attempt to write a short history of imitation from Descartes to Darwin, Kafka, Turing, and, finally, to the Large Language Models that we now call Artificial Intelligence. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

14 pages, 219 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Franz Kafka, Artificial Intelligence and the Paradoxical Recognition of Selfhood

by Leah Tomkins

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020037 - 19 Feb 2025

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Abstract

At the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka (1883–1924), this paper explores the complexities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the lens of Kafka’s literary and professional work, especially those relating to the dynamics of recognition and misrecognition. Through Kafkan eyes, both philosophical [...] Read more.

At the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka (1883–1924), this paper explores the complexities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the lens of Kafka’s literary and professional work, especially those relating to the dynamics of recognition and misrecognition. Through Kafkan eyes, both philosophical and technological hankerings after recognition and its connection with the notion of the ‘true self’ are thrown into sharp relief, whether this ‘truth’ is related to authenticity or to accuracy. This encourages us to challenge some of the core assumptions of our relationship with systems and tools, including (1) the taken-for-granted formula of recognition being good, misrecognition being bad; (2) the suggestion that aligning AI with human values will make it, and therefore us, safer and more secure; and (3) the assumption that the masters are in charge in the master/slave dialectic that is often used to express the relationship between humans and technologies. The paper references three of Kafka’s most famous works, The Trial, The Castle and In the Penal Colony, in ways that are accessible to those new to Kafka. More seasoned Kafka enthusiasts will be able to see and contextualise the paper’s themes and provocations within these works, and extrapolate to his other writings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

19 pages, 297 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ghosts in the Machine: Kafka and AI

by Imke Meyer

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020025 - 6 Feb 2025

Viewed by 672

Abstract

The writings of Franz Kafka open, perhaps precisely because of their temporal distance to our present, a unique window onto the nexus of power, material, and the human that constitutes AI today. Anxiety and Unbehagen [discontent] are states of mind that often grip [...] Read more.

The writings of Franz Kafka open, perhaps precisely because of their temporal distance to our present, a unique window onto the nexus of power, material, and the human that constitutes AI today. Anxiety and Unbehagen [discontent] are states of mind that often grip both Kafka and his characters in an early-20th-century world increasingly dependent upon and perceived through the lens of disembodied communication and technology. But can we draw a line from Kafka’s reflections on analog media to the digital media that have come to dominate our lives in the 21st century, and whose effects are felt on a planetary scale? The short answer is “yes”. In Kafka’s analog world of technological horrors, glitches in the machinic administration of human life turn out to be not bugs, but rather features of the system; precisely the arbitrary effects that accompany the rigid implementation of rules and the slippages that occur during their merciless application enhance the power of the system as a whole. Kafka’s apparatuses and bureaucratic systems, in their powerful and toxic confluence of regularity and opacity, systematicity and arbitrariness, foreshadow the effects of AI upon our embodied existence in the 21st century. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

9 pages, 188 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Translating Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse People” as a Metaphor for AI

by Dylan James Peterson

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020021 - 29 Jan 2025

Viewed by 1076

Abstract

Differing English translations of Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse People” have inspired diverse critical readings of the story. As a post-liminal text, a translation retrospectively highlights the ambiguity of the original’s rhetorical meaning. Read as a metaphor for artificial intelligence [...] Read more.

Differing English translations of Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse People” have inspired diverse critical readings of the story. As a post-liminal text, a translation retrospectively highlights the ambiguity of the original’s rhetorical meaning. Read as a metaphor for artificial intelligence (A.I.), “Josefine” reflects an uncanny sort of regenerated reality as a conflicted narrator ponders the meaning of Josefine’s song following her disappearance. Likewise, the form produced by A.I. programs like ChatGPT following an initial human input is typically that of a narrative, albeit one devoid of creativity, replaced instead with algorithmic determinism. Philosophical questions about the discursive potential of technology such as generative A.I. pose challenges to the definitional assumptions about the form narrative takes in rhetorical situations, wherein the audience/reader is left with a message untethered from its prompter/writer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

11 pages, 201 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Telephones, Narrative, Algorithms: Untimely Meditations on Kafka

by Ansgar K. Mohnkern

Humanities 2025, 14(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14010016 - 17 Jan 2025

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Abstract

This essay traces Kafka’s writings as documents of a technological consciousness both a century ago and today. On the one hand, they are historical archives indexing the influence of modern technology in the lifeworld of the early 20th century. On the other hand, [...] Read more.

This essay traces Kafka’s writings as documents of a technological consciousness both a century ago and today. On the one hand, they are historical archives indexing the influence of modern technology in the lifeworld of the early 20th century. On the other hand, however, they also carry a historical index through which they become precise informants of our digital age. With a particular eye on Kafka’s parable “Before the Law”, this essay carves out elements of a narrative order which, as for surprising formal correspondences, can (and perhaps must) be called algorithmic. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

19 pages, 294 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Kafkaesque Algorithms: Kafka’s Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Jake Fraser

Humanities 2025, 14(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14010013 - 15 Jan 2025

Viewed by 968

Abstract

This article uses the surge of recent AI-generated simulations of Kafka’s writing as an opportunity to reflect upon both what AI can teach us about Kafka’s writing and what Kafka’s writing can teach us about the age of artificial intelligence. Under the heading [...] Read more.

This article uses the surge of recent AI-generated simulations of Kafka’s writing as an opportunity to reflect upon both what AI can teach us about Kafka’s writing and what Kafka’s writing can teach us about the age of artificial intelligence. Under the heading “Kafkaesque Algorithms”, this article explores three distinct but related questions that emerge at the intersection of stylistics, poetics, and media theory. First, do AI simulations of Kafka’s writing adequately capture Kafka’s style, and if not, why not? Second, is there perhaps something inherently algorithmic about Kafka’s poetics, in ways that might both tempt and resist simulation by AI? And third, is the notion of outsourcing low-level repetitive labor to machines—a common promotional strategy for contemporary AI writing aids—truly novel, or would it instead have already been familiar to Kafka himself? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

24 pages, 334 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Transcendence of the Human Far Beyond AI—Kafka’s In the Penal Colony and Schopenhauerian Eschatology

by Søren Robert Fauth

Humanities 2025, 14(1), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14010005 - 8 Jan 2025

Viewed by 1351

Abstract

Humanity has always aspired beyond the human. The technological development in recent decades has been extraordinary, leading to new attempts to overcome the all-too-human condition. We dream of conquering death, upgrading our bodies into perfect performance machines and enhancing our intelligence through bio-nanotechnology. [...] Read more.

Humanity has always aspired beyond the human. The technological development in recent decades has been extraordinary, leading to new attempts to overcome the all-too-human condition. We dream of conquering death, upgrading our bodies into perfect performance machines and enhancing our intelligence through bio-nanotechnology. We are familiar with the side effects: alienation, stress, anxiety, depression. This article contends that Franz Kafka’s enigmatic oeuvre at its core harbors a yearning to transcend the human. Through a close reading of the narrative In the Penal Colony, it is demonstrated that this yearning is far more radical and uncompromising than the modern vision of extending and optimizing human life. Instead of the modern ego-concerned affirmation of life and the body that hides behind much of AI and modern technology, Kafka seeks a radical vision of total transformation and transcending the human into ‘nothingness’. The article shows that this transformation corresponds to core concepts in Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, primarily his doctrine of the denial of the will to live and asceticism. Instead of the species-narcissistic affirmation of life and the body that lurks behind much of AI and modern technology, Kafka strives for a definitive overcoming of the life we desire. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)

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