Many thinkers have seized on Melville’s character, Bartleby, and his astonishing words, “ I would prefer not to “. G. Berkman traces this Bartleby effect by showing how, in a now bygone era, philosophy and literature could fertilize each other.
Melville’s short story, Bartleby, the scrivenerhas long been an object of fascination for philosophers, many of whom have commented on it. Gisèle Berkman’s purpose here is not to add her personal interpretation, but to show how and why this text by one of the greatest American writers of the XIXe century gave so much to think about to the philosophers of XXeand particularly aware that we can approximately place it in France between 1960 and 1980. This very enigmatic news irrigated the texts of authors like Blanchot, Deleuze, or Derrida who, each in their own way, accompanied the exit from Hegelianism , systematic and circular thinking. Their common point is to have sought to move in the direction of what Foucault called “ thought from outside “. All these authors, haunted by the in-between, the limit, the difference, could only find in the figure of Bartleby and his undecidable formula, highly caloric food for their own reflection.
History
Let’s start by briefly reviewing the fable in question. Melville features a Wall Street lawyer and his two collaborators. It feels like a Dickens novel until a mysterious character enters: Bartleby, a conscientious and hieratic copyist. One day, the latter is called by the lawyer to collate a document and there is amazement. ; the scribe retorts to everyone’s surprise: “ I would prefer not to “, that is to say literally, “ I would rather not (do) “.
From this point on, the formula constitutes Bartleby’s response to any request or suggestion. He therefore gradually and as if inexorably abandoned all activity, including that of copyist for which he had been hired. The lawyer even discovers to his horror that Bartleby is sleeping in the study, and that he has no intention of leaving. Faced with this untenable situation, it is the lawyer who ends up moving then, torn by his conscience and his pity, returns to see him, first in the building where his study was held, then in the prison where Bartleby was finally locked up. The latter, lying at the foot of the courtyard wall, is dead. In the epilogue, imbued with deep sadness, the lawyer-narrator ends his story with the mention of a rumor: Bartleby would have been, in the past, employed in the office of discarded letters in Washington. Melville then ends with these words: “ Oh Bartleby ! Ah humanity ! “.
Bartleby the writer
The first chapter of G. Berkman’s book, devoted to Blanchot’s Bartleby, is undoubtedly the most fascinating. The analyzes it offers, particularly in The writing of disastermake the mysterious copyist a figure of passivity, of the gentle resignation in which the subject gradually separates from himself until losing himself entirely in inaction, then death. It is this loss of self that is expressed in the famous formula: “ I would prefer not to “. Formula of ambiguity if there is one, since it does not oppose a refusal, a “ No » pure and simple, but leaves the possibility of yes and no, with the opening of “ I would prefer » and the closing of the « not to “. The use of the conditional is obviously fundamental, as is the slightly precious turn of the sentence, with a politeness and gentleness which the interlocutor has great difficulty in resisting (The most banal formula in this regard would be, y understood at the time of Melville, “ I’d rather not to ). Thus, for Philippe Jaworski, “ Bartleby is the marvelous mystery of a word which says at the same time almost yes and almost No. Bartleby is almost still, almost silent, almost useless, almost dead, almost incomprehensible. Almost is the word of the moving limit, of the trace that is fading, of the sign that is fading “.
It is indeed this Bartleby that we find in Blanchot, for whom the scribe of the short story became the writerWho “ undoes the work of the concept “, that is to say the one who, far from the figures of the inspired artist or the dialectician philosopher, only writes or rewrites a text forever forgotten and covered up by successive copies. The writer leaves dialectical thought by taking a step aside, abandoning affirmation and negation, thesis and antithesis, to embody the figure of the neutral, of the suspension of the logos. Thus for Blanchot, Bartleby, the figure of the neutral par excellence, is also that of the writer par excellence. This patient work of copying, the essence of his activity, leads him gradually but inexorably to this disembodiment, to the exit of himself in the direction of the outthat is to say disaster.
From the Society of Brothers
The commentary that G. Deleuze proposes Bartleby also has to do with this “ thought from outside “, but the philosopher makes his very singular voice heard throughout the text he devotes to it. We are struck by the force of this reading which makes Bartleby an Original, a figure of passive resistance, leading to a break with previous traditional society. Indeed, the work of copying is the infinite replication of the image, the daughter of an immutable original. It is therefore the sustainability of the Father-son structure, and naturally the transmission of the Law of the Fathers, which are threatened by its abandonment. By stopping writing, by stopping copying, Bartleby makes a break with the vertical dimension of the power relationship. We can also clearly see how the impotence of the lawyer in the face of his scribe testifies to the deactivation of paternal power, to the father-son break which takes place in democratic American society, which has become a society of brothers. Deleuze goes so far as to see in the stone wall that the copyist faces all day, a metaphor for this social structure where individuals are so many stones both united and located on a single plane (p. 105).
We are therefore dealing with Deleuze with a messianic and revolutionary Bartleby, opening the door to possible political interpretations of this figure. Among these, mentioned by G. Berkman in the last chapter of his work, let us mention the contribution of M. Hardt and T. Negri, who see in the Melvillian scribe the paragon of the refusal of authority, of voluntary servitude . For these two authors, this first step towards liberation is however sterile insofar as it consists of an absolute and solitary refusal, which is not accompanied by any project of rebuilding the social body. The problem, however, is that it is very debatable whether the formula expresses any refusal, as evidenced by its undecidable nature, and Bartleby’s attitude also bears, throughout the short story, the characteristics of resignation, and of the quiet acceptance of his fate. In this respect, Mr. Imbert’s analysis seems much more convincing to us, when he declares that “ Bartleby is not a rebel who advocates civil disobedience like Thoreau. He says “no” nonchalantly, almost without believing it (…). What emerges from this devastating negativism is perhaps confusedly the right of preference of non-being, the right of seizure exercised by death, the great leveler who demands her due and who, throughout time, has been the black version of justice. »
From Melville’s fable to that of the philosophers
Some interpretations are more convincing than others. It is certainly not among the first that G. Berkman places that of Agamben. For the latter, Bartleby is “ the angel of possibility “. He embodies this reserve of power (since what he can, he can also not do it), a nothing which is not absolute, but the “ Nothing » from which all creation proceeds. It is here with power as with the patient intellect of Aristotle, compared to a tabula rasa. Contingency is therefore for Agamben the mark of the subject who, through his decision, moves the possible to the real. Thus, Bartleby the creator is like the reverse of another figure, copiously worked by Agamben in What remains of Auschwitzthat is to say that of “ Muslim » extermination camps. Auschwitz in fact is the emergence of the impossible forced into reality. THE “ Muslim » is this figure of the impossible which, like a wandering shadow dispossessed of all power, can no longer do anything, and in particular can no longer say nothing. Two mirror figures therefore, symmetrical in their relationship to power but, perhaps we are allowed to think, eminently comparable in their relationship to death. Beyond the interest that Agamben’s texts may have in themselves, we nevertheless have the impression, and this is what G. Berkman seems to reproach them for, that we no longer listen here to this that the literary text has to say, and that philosophy diverts it to better appropriate it.
The reader also remains stunned by the very paradoxical interpretation of Derrida, who sees in Bartleby a sacrificer, a new Abraham. The comparison is based in part on the idea that Abraham finds himself in the situation where “ he would prefer not to “. For Derrida it is true, literature constitutes a secularization of Scripture, and indefinitely replays the sacrificial gesture of Abraham. Bartleby the writer would then also be the author of such a sacrifice. We may wonder, however, whether it would not be possible to support with as much aptness a rapprochement between Bartleby and Isaac. After all, Isaac too could undoubtedly have said, or at least thought: “ I would prefer not to “.
As we see, the philosophical commentaries devoted to Bartleby are very diverse, often contradictory, sometimes clearly far removed from Melville’s text. But can we blame them? ? Isn’t the characteristic of a great literary text that it survives its author and produces remarkable effects in his posterity? ? If Bartleby’s fable stimulated philosophers, if it had effects on the transformation of their concepts, they in return invented other fables, other Bartlebys each taking the form corresponding to their concerns and themes. It is moreover this “ return effect » which appears best in G. Berkman’s book. As for the initial effect, namely the secret but effective work of the figure of Bartleby throughout the career of the authors mentioned here, it is perhaps less readable, except in the pages devoted to Blanchot where we understand how Melville’s copyist was able to work secretly in the work of an author who ended up making copying the essence of writing, even if the character himself is not truly worked only in The writing of disaster.
This book, containing perhaps the most beautiful thing written about Bartleby, belongs to an era marked by authors who, at their peak in the 1970s, wrote indiscriminately philosophical and literary ways, trying to escape the imposing model constituted by scientific discourse. We can therefore easily understand why Melville’s short story, in the challenge it seems to throw at the logic of the excluded middle, literally fascinated them. Unfortunately, this time is well and truly over, according to G. Berkman, and writers who are interested in Bartleby today no longer enjoy the joys of endless interpretation where the concept and the fable respond to each other: the poor scribe is most often reduced to a flat caricature of an advertising nature, and his famous formula to a simple slogan. That the treatment reserved for a literary figure is indicative of the spirit of the times is also what The Bartleby effect aims to show.