What Franz Kafka Knew About Communication (Before AI Ever Entered the Chat)
Kafka once questioned the limits of language. As AI transforms how we communicate, meaningful connection comes not just from clarity, but from recognition.
“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I can only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in these bones.” — Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of major change. Modernism was reshaping literature and art. Europe was undergoing rapid industrialization, urbanization, and a dizzying expansion of bureaucracy.
And underneath it all, a quiet crisis was building: people were starting to feel more disconnected from themselves, and from each other.
Like today, Kafka’s era was marked by transition—an opportunity to redefine what it meant to be human in the face of accelerating change.
I’ve been thinking about his words a lot lately. They capture the heart of this newsletter: the timeless desire to communicate, connect, and feel truly understood in a world overflowing with content and conversation.
In a single sentence, Kafka puts language on trial (😉), calling it both essential and inadequate. It’s the tool we reach for to make sense of our inner lives, even knowing it will never fully capture what we mean. Still, we try. We write. We explain.
The Limits of Language
Kafka’s quote is about the struggle to express what language can’t quite hold. Even before algorithms and GPTs, we’ve long tried (and often failed) to say what we mean, to mean what we feel, and to be received without confusion.
Here’s the thing: Language was supposed to be the bridge. But what Kafka grasped (and what so many of us are still reconciling with) is that some truths live too deep for syntax. They’re felt, not phrased.
So, today, we face a paradox: We have more ways to communicate than ever… but are we actually connecting?
Communication Beyond the Prompt
While AI isn’t the enemy of communication, it’s not necessarily the translator of the incommunicable either. It can synthesize, repackage, even mimic emotion. But Kafka’s “felt in my bones” moments? Those don’t come with a prompt. They come from lived experience, cultural context, body language, and silence.
Now, we’re learning a new literacy: not just AI fluency, but human fluency in an AI world. That means recognizing when clarity is enough and when connection is needed (e.g. when to automate a message… or not).
Kafka wasn’t optimizing for engagement. He was trying to be understood. That’s still the essence of good communication today and, whether personal or professional, it’s ultimately about human recognition.
Branding and the Incommunicable
Branding is modern storytelling and storytelling is just another attempt to say what we can’t always name, but know when we feel it.
Great branding is bone-deep. It resonates not because it’s clever or consistent (though that helps), but because it understands. It reflects the customer’s lived experience. It says: “We get you.”
Even in a world of automation and constant content, the brands that win will be the ones that still sound and feel human.
That kind of branding doesn’t come from perfect phrasing. It comes from listening and knowing your audience as people, not personas.
If Kafka were a CMO today (can you imagine?), he might remind us: your customer isn’t just looking for clarity, they’re looking for recognition.
And maybe he’d ask: “What are we really trying to say? And why can’t we say it?”
The role of branding, then, isn’t to explain but to reveal what your audience already feels but can’t articulate.
Recognition Over Clarity
Kafka didn’t write for clicks. He wrote because something inside him demanded to be expressed. That urgency, the compulsion to communicate the incommunicable, is what gives language its power.
That’s the paradox we’re still living: language may fall short, but we keep reaching anyway for the chance that someone might recognize themselves in what we’re trying to say.
Clarity is useful. But recognition is unforgettable. And in a time shaped by prompts, that’s what still makes us human.