Ben Kafka

Books

• William Pietz, The Problem of the Fetish, ed. Francesco Pellizzi, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Ben Kafka (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
• The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, 2012). French translation: Le Demon de l'Écriture: Pouvoirs et Limites de la Paperasse (Éditions Zones Sensibles, 2013). ("provocative, original, and a very good read” – NYRB • "witty and rich" - The TLS • "keen and vivacious" - PW • "probably one of the most entertaining scholarly books ever written" - Somatosphere • "eccentric" - NYT)

Selected Articles, Essays, and Reviews

• "The Caregiver's Dilemma: Ben Kafka interviews W.J.T. Mitchell," Los Angeles Review of Books, September 23, 2020 (link)
• Review of Christopher Bollas, Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol 101, no. 2 (2020)
• "Is the Death Drive Real?," Gizmodo, February 3, 2020 (link) 
• "Returning to the Repressed" (followed by an exchange with Brian Connolly), History of the Present 9.2 (Fall 2019)
• "Are Friends Electric? Jeffrey Sconce's The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity," Bookforum (Feb/March 2019). (link)
• "Human, Also Human," October 166 (Fall 2018) (link)
• “Medication and its Discontents: Lauren Slater’s Blue Dreams: The Science and Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds,” Bookforum (Feb/Mar 2018)  (link)
• "What is the Future of Psychoanalysis in the Academy?," Psychoanalysis and History 20:1 (2018)
• "Ni Prose Ni Vers: Le Carnet de Notes du Psychanalyste," Les Cahiers du musée nationale d'art moderne (Hors-Série 2017)
• “Oedipus Klex: Damion Searls’s The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing,” Artforum (September 2017)
• “Analyze This: Suzanne O’Sullivan’s Is It All In Your Head? True Stories of Imaginary Illness,” Bookforum (April/May 2017) (link)
• “Smoke Screen: D.A. Miller’s Hidden Hitchcock,” Artforum (March 2017)
• “Braving the Elements: Jussi Parikka’s Geology of Media,” Artforum (November 2015) (link)
• "A Riot on Every Page: Archive, Bureaucracy, Paranoia," in Peter Piller Archive - Materials (G) Albedo (Fotomuseum Winterthur/Walter König, 2014).
• "Medium/Media" in Emily Apter, Barbara Cassin, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood, eds., Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton University Press, 2014)
• "On Paperwork," Il Palazzo Enciclopedico: Catalogue of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013)
• "The Administration of Things: A Genealogy" West 86th online (May 2012)
• “From the Desk of Roland Barthes: Putting Mater (and Pater) Back in Materialism,” West 86th, vol. 18, no. 2 (Fall 2011)
• “No, Oedipus Does Not Exist,” with Jamieson Webster, Cabinet #42 (Summer 2011) (link)
• "Pushing Paper," Lapham's Quarterly, vol. 4., no. 2. (Spring 2011)
• "Power Hungry: Dining With the Committee of Public Safety," Cabinet #32 (Winter 2008-09). (link)
• "Paperwork: State of the Discipline," Book History #12 (2009)
• "The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror," Representations vol. 98, no. 1 (Spring 2007).