Abstract: This article aims to discuss the role of the telephone and its operators in Franz Kafka's novel The Man who Disappeared. The role of the telephone in industrial work processes is based on the principle of economy and the acceleration of communication. The discourse of psychotechnics is particularly fruitful to illuminate the new normative practices of the industrial work, in which telephonists take part. Kafka's protagonist, who arrives in the United States, perceives the new experience of labour as violent and disorienting. The human being appears to be part of a mass ornament, such as in the case of the mechanical and exploited workers in the novel as well as the telephone operators, who are selected according to empirical methods and can be dismissed at any time. The processes of automation affect the body and mental life of the employees, which Kafka hyperbolizes and ironizes in his novel.
Keywords: telephone; industrial psychology; Hugo Münsterberg; Franz Kafka.