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.