The Counterforce of Technologization in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street”

Abstract

<p>梅爾維爾〈錄事巴托比：華爾街的故事〉出版至今評論多將焦點置於巴托比的回答：「我寧願不。」此回答引起學者對其反抗行為多重的詮釋，但卻甚少學者將當時美國十九世紀工業化社會以新潮科技取代傳統技術的背景列入討論，印刷技術的興起與法律事務所抄寫員的興衰關係就為一明顯的例子。本文將以媒介理論出發，闡述巴托比之回答與死亡可視為十九世紀美國新科技興起，人被迫機械化、技術化、規格化巨大浪潮下的反動力和能動性展現。</p> <p> </p><p>Herman Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" has become a hit in American literature. The particular term "the Bartleby industry" indicates its importance and popularity in academic fields. The short story has been discussed regarding Marxism, autism, linguistics, legal systems, representation, and so on. All of these discussions revolve around Bartleby’s famous expression, "I prefer not to." Bartleby’s ambiguous expression evokes conflicting interpretations among scholars: "the will to nothingness" and "the nothingness of the will," that is, the active and negative resistance that Bartleby engaged in. Although there are so many ways to interpret Bartleby’s expression, none seriously focuses on the influence of technological devices in 19th-century America on the formation of Bartleby’s reaction to his external environment. This paper aims to reinterpret Bartleby’s enigmatic demeanor and the circumstances of his death to argue that both his expression and his death serve as a symbolic gesture of rupture, resisting the driving force of Melville’s contemporary technologically driven, industrialized society.</p> <p> </p>