Chapter VI: Bartleby’s “I prefer not to”

Chapter VI: Bartleby’s “I prefer not to”

Bartleby is no revolutionary, his aim is not social change, his aim is unclear, what is apparent though is that he seeks no recognition in a big Other for his deeds. It is an act of self-destitution, or depersonalization in the sense that he goes about his gesture of refusal of his preference not out of a defiance that can be named, but as a refusal that cannot be articulated within the Symbolic order.

Bartleby’s co-workers and employer are baffled. His refusal via the mode of desubectivization means it is not done on behalf of a particular identity (environmentalist, feminist, working class etc.) Bartleby’s subjectivity does not appear on the plane of hysterical desire, he does not exist as a subject of desire. Bartleby is on the contrary a subject of the drive, he identifies directly with objet a and thus “institutes a gap between itself and its symbolic subjective dimension” (Rothenberg 2010, 176-177).

This is the gesture of subtraction at its purest, the reduction of all qualitative differences to a purely formal minimal difference. There is no violent quality in it; violence pertains to its very immobile, inert, insistent, impassive being. Bartleby couldn’t even hurt a fly – that’s what makes his presence so unbearable. (Žižek 2005b, 58)

And the question then is “So we must all then become so unbearable?” Unbearable in this precise sense: the subject now is placed in the position of objet (a) as void of the other’s desire. In other words we find ourselves in the discourse of the Analyst, and Bartleby occupies the position of objet a, silent, unobtrusive, prompting perhaps a slight hystericization of those around him in that they react defensively to his silence and refusals to participate in the ‘game.’⁶¹ Bartleby causes anxiety and slight turmoil at his office because he is not saying “I do not want to”, but affirming, saying that he “prefers not to.” Bartleby’s act then is successful in setting off, against his own background of passive resistance, the contingency of the Symbolic, that things could be otherwise. By occupying the very void of desire in the position of agency (analyst discourse), he forces those closest around him into a frenzy of anxiety, self-doubt, persecution/scapegoating and fear. But he remains passive in his preference, not being able to hurt a fly thus opening up a transformative space. Žižek believes that in Bartleby one sees “how we pass from the politics of “resistance” or “protestation” which parasitizes upon what it negates, to a politics which “opens up a new space outside the hegemonic position and its negation” (Parallax 382).

To add another twist on our take on Bartleby, Žižek continues, “Bartleby’s gesture is what remains of the supplement to the Law when its place is emptied of all its obscene superego content” (382). What is key to understand about Bartleby is that, getting back to Butler’s query above: in an act of critical desubjectivation how would one know ones existence, how would it be recognizable? A critical desubjectivation empties the law of its obscene superego content of imaginary resentment, hate, jealousy and fantasies of revenge and scapegoating etc, thus any identities that emerge could be labelled post-Oedipal, yet we must be careful to note here, post-Oedipal identities are not whole, refined, without excess, as that would simply be another form of Imaginary identification, one of purification, which entails its own debilitating and politically vile logic. There is no basis with which to concretely articulate a post-Oedipal identity or what that could be, we can only insist along with Žižek that Bartleby remains an underlying principle, the articulating spirit that sustains the work of construction of a new Symbolic.

Whatever beings

Written over a century ago Bartleby’s act underscores a formation of subjectivity that has very contemporary resonances. Contrasting Bartleby`s “I prefer not to,” with its contemporary variant, “whatever,” Jodi Dean highlights this refusal of identity and its possible political effects. When somebody responds, “whatever,” it unseats both the sender and receiver.

By acknowledging communication without attending to the content of the message, “whatever” denies the sender the sense that her message has been received because its content remains unaddressed. The sender is challenged, her position as sender undermined. “Whatever” forestalls a communicative exchange even as it adopts communicative form. It refrains from establishing the subject position of the one who responds with “whatever,” and it unsettles the position of the one who initiates the exchange. It’s a glitch in orality. (Dean 2010, 69)

Citing the idea of “whatever beings” from Giorgio Agamben, Dean states that just as “I prefer not to,” the term “whatever,” “asserts no preferences. It neither affirms nor rejects. And it doesn’t expose the subject as a desiring subject to whom something matters.” It also comes with its affective dimension, “whatever,” conveys an insolence, an attitude or provocation, “that arises out of its function as a non-responsive response.” Yet to the inevitable comparison of whatever beings to images of skateboarders in hoodies, one should instead insist that perhaps the emphasis should be placed not on the insolent attitude or non-committal, non-reply, but rather on the possibility of this action foregrounding the contingent nature of the ontic traits of identity. “Unburdened by the obligations of being this or that, of being bound by choices or words or expectation of meaning, whatever beings could flow into and through community without presuppositions” what Dean, citing Agamben, calls a “singularity without identity” (2010, 83). The point hence of desubjectivization is that the coordinates of all identity are put in relief. The idea of singularity without identity is not a case of self-denial, or that of a ‘self’ denying itself. For in that case there are all kinds of anti-consumerist movements ranging from recycling programs to moratoriums on buying consumer goods for one whole year that fall into that subjective form of self-denial and which paradoxically are consumer initiatives of a self-aggrandizing and self-congratulatory nature. Again speaking to Žižek’s claim about saving starving children in Africa, the radical response would be “I prefer not to,” or “whatever.” When asked to purchase a coffee because every purchase of a cappuccino helps send a Guatemalan child to ... the response should be “whatever.” In other words, instead of locating their desire in the locus of the big Other, the subject occupies the position of objet a, as the cause of its own desire. It is the preference not to turn around when hailed by the big Other, but to ignore the interpellative call:

What would happen if we just stopped? Agamben’s evocation of singularity and belonging detached from a compulsion to cultivate an individual identity or to identify with a specific group opens up the potential for another form of belonging, one unlimited by the division and restrictions of being this or that. (Dean 2010, 82)

And this form of identity is the ethical agenda of Butler and Žižek. As for example both of them seek out a form of non-national belonging, beyond boundaries of state and ethnicity. An ethical relation and its political exposition can only take place on the order of objectivity, the identification with objet a creates a distance towards one’s own symbolic identity thus putting one in the position to act, as Žižek says, in an “objectivity-ethical” way (2006d 182).

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