No. 56 - Tara B. Smith: Administered Dehumanisation: Absurdity, Automation, and Resistance in We, Brazil, and Robodebt

Theodor Adorno’s concept of the administered world describes a reality in which anything that cannot be reduced to numbers is rendered useless, with managers and administrators as its true maintainers. This paper examines how this reduction of humanity to data is depicted in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), and Australia’s Robodebt scheme (2015–2020). In We, the totalitarian One State enforces mechanical precision and suppresses imagination. In Brazil, an absurd bureaucratic error spirals into tragedy. Robodebt, which unlawfully used income averaging to issue hundreds of thousands of false welfare debts, demonstrates the real-world harm of automated governance. Together, these case studies reveal how administrative systems erase individuality, normalise harm, and prioritise cold rationality over human dignity, while also pointing to fragile spaces for resistance and imagination.

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About the author:

Tara B. Smith

Dr. Tara B. M. Smith is an interdisciplinary researcher from the University of Sydney, Australia. In 2023, she was a ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Bremen. Currently she is an Associate Researcher at the Humanity and Space Centre at the University of Leicester completing research on space themed game design and improvements to astronaut mental health in isolation. Her research interests include contemporary religions, gaming, space, speculative fiction, conspiracy theories and ecology. She lives in Leicester with her husband and two cats Thomas and Momo.