The bureaucratic machine of homeostasis: the ontosemiotic operator of Franz Kafka in idle mode

In Kafka's prose, the letter loses the neutrality of the narrative gesture. It becomes a form of existence. The procedure here does not resolve the situation but merely reproduces the appearance of its own movement. In this case, judicial and bureaucratic mechanisms are no longer capable of transductive displacement, as they function as a futile operator devoid of productive power. Such an operator inevitably encounters pre-individual tension, but each time leaves it without formulation, failing to translate it into a stable structure. Failure arises from the cyclical reproduction of procedures, as well as from semiotic impenetrability and autocommunicative loops that close the system on itself. That is, the paradox of Kafkaesque writing lies in the fact that the figures of the accused, the land surveyor, or the insect appear as traces of a transition that never took place. The theoretical framework of the study relies on two lines. The first line traces back to Simondon's procedural ontology. The second is related to Lotman's semiotics of culture. Their combination allows us to uncover the operational nature of Kafka's writing. There is a fundamental divergence between these positions. However, for our task, this divergence becomes a resource. The dual optics set the direction for analytical work. The main instruments here are the interpretation of philosophical and literary texts, conceptual analysis, and comparative modeling, which complement each other. The novelty of the proposed work lies in the fact that Kafka's prose is interpreted as an ontological machine, the logic of which is explicitly articulated for the first time through the combination of Simondon's and Lotman's concepts. Simondon allows us to capture the failure at the level of ontogenesis. Pre-individual tension does not find resolution in a stable structure. Lotman highlights the semiotic dimension of this failure. The boundaries of the semiosphere cease to be a zone of meaning production. They transform into a barrier reproducing their own impenetrability. The combination of these two perspectives allows us to describe a single operational node that has eluded attention both in purely philological and strictly philosophical readings of Kafka. Engaging with Kafka's work in this context is not a nostalgic gesture, but rather a way of understanding the forms of alienation that permeate contemporary existence in algorithmic environments and platforms, where the logic of procedures and signs shares similar features.