Bartleby

[Paul Mackin]

  Yes, as Rob is saying, Bartleby's consumate skill at passive 
resistance seems to be the point of the story and is the crucial 
factor--for good or ill--in whatever it is that is happening to the 
social fabric binding the  employer to his employee. Since language is 
heavily involved in passive resistance, I don't doubt for a second that 
Deleuze isn't able to come up with some ingenious method to make his 
philosophical points. Just hope it doesn't call too heavilily on the 
circumstance of Bartleby's in-reality-quite-complete American sentence 
structure. Would think a better approach might be the question: why is 
it necessary so often to clothe perfectly legitimate demands of an 
employer on an employee in the subjunctive or as a question? It is,  we 
all know it is, and that nothing can be done about it. But the question 
of why is interesting, isn't it?  Think this might be something Rob 
would be interested in.

Will close by saying I can't help being reminded of an utterance that 
was popular around here a few years back and which might have 
constituted  an appropriate response to Bartleby.

Just do it!

P.
.


jbor wrote:

>I think you've hit the nail on the head, Paul. Bartleby's "I prefer not to"
>is part of an inter-personal exchange, where the sense of what Bartleby
>would prefer not to *do* is understood (by both participants in the
>exchange, and by the reader of the story) because it has been stated in the
>request. It's quite a standard construction in spoken English(es) - "I don't
>want to", "are you going to?" etc. as responses to utterances like "Do your
>work" or "She told me to do my work" etc. In an informal context you'd only
>really need to repeat the main part of the verb for extra emphasis of some
>kind. I wouldn't call it a grammatical error.
>
>It's important that in the story Bartleby varies his replies. He also says
>"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable", "I'd prefer that
>you would withdraw for the present", "I would prefer to be left alone here",
>"I would prefer not", and "I would prefer *not* to quit you". It'
>s the "I
>would prefer" stem which is repeated in each new manifestation of Bartleby's
>obstinacy, and which the other employees discuss at some length and
>experiment with and adopt into their own discourse patterns. Thus, it's the
>modality ("would"), which evokes both civility and indeterminacy in regard
>to consequence, and the simple expression of a personal preference without a
>reason, or an imperative, attached to it, which are being foregrounded by
>Melville - Bartleby's passive resistance, in other words.
>
>I haven't read the Deleuze article which Heikki mentioned either, but I
>think that as well as stymieing the conversation Bartleby's quiet resistance
>upsets the accepted employer/employee protocols, and throws the onus of
>*material* action back onto his interlocutor, in the same way that the
>non-delivery of a letter compels the sender to take the next step and try to
>force the issue (whatever it might be).
>
>best
>
>
><
>br>Paul wrote:
>
>
>>The whole thing merely drew emphasis for me to the fact that American
>>English (as used by poor Bartleby) practically demands the ellipticizing
>>of the infinitive verb in this particular type of construction. Whether
>>such has anything to do with the incompleteness and agrammaticallity
>>Deleuze talks about I don't know. Would have to read the article I guess.
>>
>
>