Department of Media, Culture, and Communication

Faculty

Ben Kafka

Assistant Professor, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication;
Cross appointments, Departments of History and French

Ben Kafka

Phone: (212) 992-8287
Email:
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 11-1

Ben Kafka is a critical theorist and historian with an interest in the psychic life of media. He is also a candidate psychoanalyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), a component society of the International Psychoanalytical Association; he works with adults and adolescents through the IPTAR Clinical Center and the NYC Free Clinic. His first book, The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork, will be published by Zone Books in Fall 2012. He is currently writing a history of graphology for Yale University Press.

Kafka is co-editor of History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, a contributing editor to West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, and an occasional contributor to Cabinet. He has been a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts; the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study; the Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar); and, since 2007, the New York Institute for the Humanities. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He serves on the advisory board of the Feminist Theory Archives at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University.

He received his B.A. in History and Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and his Ph.D. in European Intellectual History from Stanford University.


Awards

  • Charles A. Ryskamp Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies (2012)
  • Senior Fellow, Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM Weimar) (2012)
  • Member, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study (2009-10)
  • Member, New York Institute for the Humanities (2007-present)
  • Cotsen-Perkins Fellow, Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (2004-07)
  • Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (2003-04)
  • Fulbright for study and research in Paris (2001-02)

Selected Publications

  • The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, Fall 2012) (link)
  • "The Administration of Things: A Genealogy," West 86th (May 2012) (link)
  • "Medium/Media" in Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood, eds., Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton University Press, forthcoming) (link)
  • "From the Desk of Roland Barthes: Putting Mater (and Pater ) Back in Materialism," West 86th: Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 18:2 (Fall-Winter 2011) (link)
  • "Only a Layman: Psychoanalysis and History," DIVISION/Review: A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum vol. 1 no. 2 (summer 2011) (link)
  • "No, Oedipus Does Not Exist" (with Jamieson Webster), Cabinet #42 (summer 2011) (view)
  • "The Radical Cure," Psychoanalytic Dialogues 21:3 (2011) (view)
  • "Paperwork Explosion," West 86th (May 2011) (link)
  • "Pushing Paper: A Reconsideration of Melville and Flaubert," Lapham's Quarterly vol. IV no. 2 (spring 2011). Translations in French (subscribers only) and Polish (coming soon). (link)
  • "Red Tape Measures," In Media Res (June 2010) (link)
  • "Paperwork: The State of the Discipline," Book History #12 (2009) (link)
  • "Power Hungry," Cabinet #32 (winter 2008-09) (view)
  • "Hunting the Plumed Mammal: The History of 'Bureaucracy' in France, 1750-1850," in Becker and Von Krosigk, eds., Figures of Authority: Contributions Towards a Cultural History of Governance (Peter Lang, 2008)
  • "The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror," Representations #98 (spring 2007) (link)
  • "Sabotaging the Committee of Public Safety," Cabinet #22 (summer 2006)

Book Reviews

  • Craig Robertson, The Passport in America: The History of a Document (Oxford University Press), Bookforum (Sept/Oct/Nov 2010) (link)
  • Franz Kafka, The Office Writings (Princeton University Press), Bookforum (April/May 2009)
  • Vincent Denis, Une histoire de l'identité: France, 1715–1815 (Ed. Champ Vallon), The Journal of Modern History 81:4 (December 2009)

Selected Presentations

Courses

  • History of Communication (udg)
  • Print Media and Modernity (grad) / Print: History and Form (udg)
  • Media Archaeology (grad) / Dead Media Research Studio (udg)
  • Psychoanalysis: Desire and Culture (udg)
  • Marxism and Culture (udg)
  • Special Topics in Critical Theory: Hermeneutics of Suspicion (grad)
  • Special Topics in Critical Theory: Fetishism (grad)
  • Psychic Life of Media (grad)
  • Doctoral Core Seminar: Theory 1 (grad)