Passive Constitutions or 7 1/2 Times BartlebyStanford University Press, 2007 - 210 pages This book represents an analysis of one of the most enigmatic characters in American literature. At the same time, it addresses various questions in Melville's writings, such as passivity, identity, the impersonal and neutral, sexuality and the question of marriage, drug addiction, and ethics (especially the problem of testifying and friendship). Reference is made to the whole range of Melville's writings (excluding his poetry), and each chapter situates the question it treats within a larger cultural or theoretical context, such as the legacy of American Puritanism, the appearance of the first American asylums, Melville's treatment of the institutionalization of madness, and the appearance of certain semi-sciences (mesmerism, physiognomy, palmistry, and so on). The book thus covers Melville's thinking concerning American society, his relationship to the law, his treatment of the arts (specifically Turner's paintings), and his responses to the appearance of meteorology, reading such matters as a political and philosophical statement concerning the modern world. |
Contents
Bartleby or Error Green Screen II | 11 |
Bartleby or Melancholy Window with No View at All | 33 |
Bartleby or Stupidity Black Wall | 53 |
Bartleby or the Junkie White Wall | 69 |
Bartleby or the Impersonal White Wall and Green Screen | 83 |
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Common terms and phrases
abandonment absence absolute activity ambiguity American Andy Warhol assumption attorney attorney's Bartleby Bartleby's Bartleby's passivity Bartleby's thinking becomes body called celibatory machine clouds Confidence-Man connection dead death derangement Descartes desire difference drugs Edwards Edwards's effect Emerson empty Essays ethical everything existence face fact formless formulated Frank Stella Gilles Deleuze Ginger Nut Harrison Hayford Herman Melville Hershel Parker Ibid idea identity impersonal involuntary Ishmael language Library of America lives logic madness marriage means melancholia melancholy Melville's Meteorology Michel Foucault mind Moby-Dick motion narrative narrator negates never Nippers Northwestern University object opium pain Paradise of Bachelors paradox Peggy Kamuf perception performative person philosophy Piazza Tales Pierre possibility precisely prefer question reading reason remains Rush Scrivener silence space stupidity suffering Tartarus thing Thomas Tanselle Thoreau thought tion trans Transcendentalist truth turns W. W. Norton want to suggest Warhol witness words Writings of Herman York