BARTLEBY IS DEAD

Abstract

This paper argues against dominant philosophical interpretations of Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener and submits it to an educational reading. It problematizes readings (such as those of Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, and the Occupy Movement) where the character of Bartleby figures a way of being that allows us to escape or challenge our contemporary political and educational exigencies. Our contention is that an encounter with Bartleby is not politically or educationally enabling, but provokes the Lawyer, despite himself, to encounter the unedifying limits of any educational practice and discourse, as well as his necessary complicity in the context that supports them. We argue that anyone interested in education or politics would do much better to scrutinize their unavoidable affinity with the Lawyer, instead of projecting fantasies of escape on the character of Bartleby, who, in the end, only figures a giving up on life.

Keywords:

• Herman Melville
• Maurice Blanchot
• Lee Edelman
• Giorgio Agamben
• Gilles Deleuze
• Jacques Derrida

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

The order of the authors’ names is reverse-alphabetical and does not indicate priority. We would both like to acknowledge and thank the anonymous reviewers of this article, from whose comments and suggestions we have benefited.

1 And here we do not claim that Melville intended the Lawyer to be understood as an educator; rather, we draw attention to the educational imperatives that the story perhaps unwittingly reflects.

2 This is a questionable achievement:

Pedagogization could […] be read in oppositional terms to pedagogical projects that aim for autonomy, liberation and independence. In this respect, pedagogization looks like a concept that is not dissimilar to “medicalization.” A greater supply on the medical market does not necessarily lead to a more healthy society but can significantly increase the consumption of and dependence on healthcare. (Depaepe et al. 15–16)

3 In this respect, we build on the argument by Robin Miskolcze, which is made in primarily ethical rather than educational terms.

4 See the work of Tyson E. Lewis (“Architecture of Potentiality”; idem, “It’s a Profane Life”; idem, On Study); Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte (Vanhoutte). In order to do justice to the range of influential readings of Melville’s short story that may be found beyond the narrow confines of educational studies, we have not dwelled on Lewis’s and Vanhoutte’s application of Agamben’s thinking here, instead going to the sources of these readings; first to Agamben himself and then to Melville. Notably, while Vanhoutte’s article, in its title (“Bartleby the Example and Eros the Idea of the Work: Some Considerations on Giorgio Agamben’s ‘The Idea of Study’”), suggests it might engage with Melville’s story, it only does so through Agamben’s reading. Lewis’s readings are somewhat more problematic in that the first (“Architecture of Potentiality”) misattributes the short story to “Nathanial Hawthorn” [sic] (361), presumably a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was an important influence on Melville but was not the author of the short story. In his book On Study, Lewis does correctly ascribe the authorship of the story to Herman Melville and even works through passages of the text (46–52). However, this reading is framed in terms of Agamben’s idea of “im-potentiality” and as a “case study” of “the studier” rather than as a text with its own implications, at a remove from Agamben’s reading. As such, these educational readings (or non-readings) of Melville’s story reproduce many of the issues of Agamben’s reading of Bartleby that we critique here. For a more direct critique of the educational implications of Lewis’s Agambenian approach to the story, see Emile Bojesen.