"'The Bartleby Effect': Deleuze's Critical-Clinical and Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener"

P. 94–113.

This article is a study of Gilles Deleuze's reading of Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. In “Section 1 – Bartleby, the Scrivener,” I provide a synopsis of Melville’s story in order to establish common grounding as well as to highlight points which will become of greater significance over the course of the article. In “Section 2 – ’I would prefer not to,’” I explain the effect of Bartleby’s language, or what Deleuze calls his “formula,” pointing to how it is the central clue in the reading of the text and the first step toward understanding Bartleby‘s peculiar nature. In “Section 3 - Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity?” I delve further into Bartleby's nature by describing the narrator's growing aggravation and madness in light of Bartleby. Here, I explain how the attorney feels stranded between two forces: those of universal, abstract structure and immanent, material force or what Deleuze calls, secondary and primary nature, respectively. These culminate in “Section 4 - An Ethics of Immanence,” which is an attempt to grapple with the ethical dilemma faced by the narrator in light of this larger issue of different natures. Perhaps the most important question arising from the story is: was there or wasn’t there a way of saving Bartleby?

Keywords: philosophy of language, ethics, Gilles Deleuze, Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener

In book

Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society

Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.