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Coined in the 18th century, the term bureaucracy, literally meaning the rule of the desk or the office, has been a marker of ridicule from the start. We tend to think of bureaucracy now as a slow, unwieldy, and unyielding machinery, and of bureaucrats as either easily corruptible or as rigid, unimaginative, rule-following drones. Yet the fact remains that bureaucracy is not only an integral part of modern governance, but also impacts everyday life. In this seminar, we will attempt to trace a cultural history and theory of bureaucracy by engaging with a variety of materials including archival, literary, and cultural texts, as well as theories of bureaucracy ranging from Max Weber to more recent reflections on the functions and materiality of paperwork and administration. Bringing literary theory to bear on the study of bureaucracy, the seminar will also discuss the textual and performative aspects of its powers and failures. Special attention will be paid to the role of administrative structures and practices in state-organized forms of violence, from slavery, genocide, and forced removal to more mundane forms of control that are governed by administrative law and that are concerned with, among other things, identity, personhood, and property. Specific examples we will be looking at include racial classification in the US census, “illegal aliens” and the immigration bureaucracy, the management of Native lands and reservations, trans law and gendered identity documents. |
