“Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of ‘the truth’ but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has effects, and in that sense at least, ‘becomes true.’ Knowledge, once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practice. Thus, ‘there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations.”

— Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage. P. 27.

The apparatus described in Kafka’s short story, In the Penal Colony, is not only a symbol of the plenary power of government but also a representation of how that said power is enacted on the bodies and flesh of a socially constituted political subject. It is through the machinations and processes of power, such as described in the above Foucault passage, which determines our identities and roles within a sociopolitical context. Power signifies, it assigns, and much like the apparatus, it inscribes itself on the body. In Kafka’s colony, characters are only named by their roles, positions, and stations, all of which are mediated by their relational status within a political, bureaucratic body, and this also largely determines the way the characters relate to each other. While it can be argued that ‘power relations’ can be constitutive of the connection and relationship between two human subjects, what marks relations between a subject and an overarching authority is that power is also impersonal; what matters is the simple impress of power upon a body politic. A few real-world examples: people seeking asylum who are subject to legal investigations that are at once incredibly invasive and personal and often objectifying and dehumanizing, the U.S. government determining whether someone affected by a drone strike was indeed a target or simply ‘collateral damage,’ most glaring, the day the Founding Fathers which members of the American population should be valued as property and nothing more. As the Officer asserts, it does not matter who exactly is on the apparatus, or if they even understand what exactly is being inscribed, what matters is the inscription, the mark and knowledge of discipline and authority. In a way, this power relation is also paradoxical, as it both makes and unmakes – the label of Condemned is also a label for death, disenfranchisement and, ultimately, the destruction of the flesh.