Franz Kafka lido por comunistas brasileiros (1962-1989)

Abstract

This article presents a brief descriptive analysis of how the work of Franz Kafka was read and commented on by four Brazilian communists: Maurício Tragtenberg, Leandro Konder, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, and Michael Löwy, between the 1960s and 1980s. This period saw the czech writer's literature gaining prominence in the face of the growing contradictions of imperialist capital investments in the productive organization of Brazilian capitalism, the new complex business administrations, and the military dictatorship after 1964. Understanding Kafka's literature as a fundamental critical landmark within the overall framework of the institutionalities of alienation in contemporary capitalism, and the political possibilities of this critique, was the main point of connection that mobilized the authors' interventions.