Abstract

TORRES ESTRADA, Andrés Camilo. Bartleby, or chaos and politics. Hallazgos [online]. 2013, vol.10, n.20, pp.91-107. ISSN 1794-3841.  https://doi.org/10.15332/s1794-3841.2013.0020.06.

The paper presents an analysis of the story of Herman Melville "Bartleby, the Scrivener". This analysis is based on an approach to literature from a political notion inspired by authors such as Jacques Derrida and Jacques Rancière, but deviates from this philosophy when, above the text itself and its possibilities, it is pretended to find in it heterotopias, hopes and communities to come. This notion of politics gets literature closer to the actual world, transfiguring the ways of being and non-being. Thus, the character of Bartleby comes amid the world of representation as an agent of chaos. That is what the politics of the scrivener is about: his incursion unveils the farces of the world built and dreamed by men, but the destruction it causes is futile: the world of representation has felt its absurdity and does not know what to do with the agent of chaos, but it is not enough to ruin it. Bartleby, who has been undetermined and has left the dualities of being and not being cannot continue living: there is no room for life without references in a human and fictional world.

Keywords : Bartleby; politics; literature.

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