THE IRON CAGE OF MEANING: KAFKA'S DIALOGUES WITH WEBER, ADORNO, AND POSTMODERNITY

Franz Kafka’s literary oeuvre stands as a profound intersection of modernist literature and postmodern cultural theory, offering a rich terrain for exploring the complexities of modernity and its discontents. This article examines Kafka’s work as a dynamic case study that bridges the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of modernism with the epistemological diversity of postmodern theoretical discourses. Through his haunting narratives, characterized by bureaucratic oppression, existential alienation, and the fraught dynamics of otherness, Kafka critiques the dehumanizing forces of modern society bureaucracy, industrialization, and nationalism while anticipating postmodern inquiries into language, power, and identity. Drawing on the interpretations of critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben, the article traces how Kafka’s fiction serves as an intellectual canvas for dissecting modernity’s rational yet irrational systems, as exemplified in novels like ‘The Trial’ and ‘The Castle’.