This paper will highlight the challenges emanating from the domains of literature and history to public administration. It will highlight the relevance of Kafka's critique in the contemporary age: erosion of the subject, progressive alienation and persecution. Similarly, Orwell too identifies the paradoxical turn of the course of public administration, gradually amassing enormous power leading to his dystopian world of suppressed individuals, corruption, governmental surveillance, mind control and propaganda conserving the status quo. The paper will study the aptness of their critique to contemporary practices and issues that still need to be answered. Apart from literature, critical history, particularly the studies of Michel Foucault, have also analyzed the institutional claims of public administration. Foucault disagrees that the Enlightenment Project launching the institutional bureaucracy has been a success; he believes the scientifico-disciplinary mechanism has created its own self-justifying discourses, becoming oppressive in turn and using knowledge to legitimize power, and power to increase knowledge. The paper will end with the holistic analysis of the criticism studied, its contemporary relevance and paths available in constructing a viable theory of public administration.
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