Bartleby and the Abyss of Potentiality

Woosung Kang

《Concentric： Literary and Cultural Studies》 46卷2期 (2020/09) Pp. 37-61

https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.202009_46(2).0003

摘要

In what has been called the ＂Bartleby Industry,＂ Herman Melville's ＂A Story of Wall Street＂ has often been disproportionally evaluated by political theorists for its capacity to be read as a story of resistant subjectivity. Specifically singled out by such critics as an anti-systematic symbol, Bartleby is raised up to the condition of the revolutionary agent who prefigures the political subjectivity of post-industrial society. Taking issue with such premediated political readings, this paper attempts to deconstruct symbolic representations of Bartleby which separates Bartleby from Bartleby. Analyzing the textuality of Bartleby as the autobiography of the lawyer, I argue that critical theorists', especially Giorgio Agamben's, lack of attention to the issue of desire of the lawyer leads to the allegorical over-representation of Bartleby for the theoretical justification of political positions. Appropriating a literary figure for the means of political argumentation, these critical theorists disregard the way Bartleby's story is told by the neurotic lawyer. Agamben valorizes Bartleby as the tragic hero of impotentiality, not questioning the reliability of the lawyer-narrator. What lies beneath the lawyer's repeated emphasis on the insanity of Bartleby's ＂passive resistance＂ is defense mechanism to cover up his own madness and fear. Without considering how Bartleby's fabula is structured as a part of the lawyer's syuzhet, any configuration of Bartleby results in an allegory of reading. Focusing on the way the lawyer's autobiography pathologizes Bartleby's biography, I argue that Bartleby resists the discursive system of signification which sentimentalizes him and normalizes the lawyer's anxiety into conscientiousness.

關鍵字

Bartleby ； Bartleby ； Giorgio Agamben ； potentiality ； formula ； implosion

參考文獻

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. 1995. Translated by Danielle Heller-Roazen, Stanford UP, 1998.

Agamben, Giorgio. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Edited and translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford UP, 1999

Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. 2003. Translated by Kevin Attell, The U of Chicago P, 2005.

Arsić, Branka. Passive Constitutions or 7 1/2 Times Bartleby. Stanford UP, 2007.

Bergmann, Johannes Dietrich. “‘Bartleby’ and the Lawyer’s Story.” American Literature, vol. 47, no. 3, Nov. 1975, pp. 432-36.