He is said to be a beautiful soul whose being "in its absolute purity hangs on the edge of an abyss" (204).Ī similar reading comes from Peggy Kamuf who, under the aegis of Jacques Derrida, proposes an essay with the alluring title "Bartleby, or Decision: A Note on Allegory." At issue is the notion of the possibility or "im-possibility" of decision. Even Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri refer to Bartleby in Empire as a figure of ontological resistance to Empire. Michel Foucault, Maurice Blanchot, George Bataille, Jean-Luc Nancy, Alan Badiou, and Jacques Derrida also deserve mention among the many philosophers, too many to be listed here, who have commented on Bartleby's strange case. Slavoj Žižek added that "Bartleby could not hurt a fly, which is what makes his presence so unbearable" (385). Other philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze, believed that "Bartleby is the new Christ or the brother to us all" (90), a view also shared by Jacques Rancière. For Agamben, who has devoted another essay, "Bartleby, or On Contingency," to the novella, the formula is an example of how authority, sovereignty, and law can be resisted passively and effectively. Their only concern is with what Giorgio Agamben has called the "formula": "I would prefer not to," 1 which they take as the starting point for developing their philosophical analysis.
However, these philosophers are not concerned with the story of Bartleby per se: who he is or what he did or did not do. Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" has challenged many readers over the years with its title character's inscrutability and refusal to undertake any action with his categorical statement, "I would prefer not to." Unlike most stories that seem to generate interest solely with literary critics, Melville's story has attracted the attention of many philosophers who have been seduced by Bartleby's firm resistance and opposition to anything that the lawyer-narrator has asked him to do.
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