Alienation, Servility and Amorality: Relating Gogol’s Portrayal of Bureaupathology to an Accountability Era

Abstract

This article explores the insights literature can bring to administrative and bureaucratic critique, focusing on the work of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol’s satire of bureaucracy presages many subsequent social science analyses. These encompass the fundamental ruptures in society caused by a surfeit of bureaucracy in ‘The Nose’ and, on a more psychological level, the effects of bureaucratization on the individual in ‘The Overcoat’. His stories portray the alienation, futile activity and servility caused in lower level functionaries through problems of loss of identity, the absence of meaningful work and a lack of separation between public and private life. This article uses Gogol’s work to intensify and sharpen an exploration of the pathological responses of educational administrators and policy makers to an accountability era of burgeoning bureaucracy that has a profound negative impact on performance.