KAFKA, Ben. The demon of writing: powers and failures of paperwork. New York: Zone Books, 2012. 182 p.

Abstract

It is through remarkable yet quotidian episodes that Ben Kafka develops his book on the demon of writing. Referring to the reproduction of paperwork as such, Kafka goes back to the start of the French Revolution, where bureaucracy was applied as the tool for the representative government, the new kind of political system that the revolution introduced in the end of the XVIII century in Europe. Kafka, hence, leans on those episodes and through the historical characters, he illustrates the topics to address about the essential role paperwork took in society and why, after all, it would still be to blame for the problems of the State.Edme-Etienne Morizot is the fi rst important character in the book, and he is the one that represents the revolution of paperwork that the episode of 1789 brought to France. As he was fi red from his job in the Ministry of Finance, a year before the revolution, the real reasons for his dismissal were yet legitimate for the time: he was replaced by the son-in-law of the king's aunt's chambermaid. Unsatisfi ed with his circumstances, the following years for Morizot were marked by his claims to get his job back, or at least a financial compensation, but the French Revolution had transformed the whole offi cial sphere: Morizot, trying to fi nd someone to help him, could only fi nd paperwork and processes in a depersonalized system that "gave a damn to his problem", as Kafka points out.The representativeness the revolution sought to settle in France came with bureaucracy, and accountability was the key word. Making a contrast to