Bartleby on Wall Street
example · book: Bartleby the Scrivener ·
retold in 3 talks
Žižek invokes Melville's Bartleby, whose refrain 'I would prefer not to' was spoken facing a Wall Street wall, as the appropriate first gesture for the Occupy movement: a refusal to engage on the system's terms before a new language has been found.
As told 2
“I would prefer not to.”
“it says i would prefer not to. not, i don't prefer to do it.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
communism as the name of a problem
×1
determinate negation
×1
undeadness
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Steven St. Croix1Franz Schubert1Lady Gaga1Herman Melville1Robert Schumann1Erich Mielke1Roman Polanski1Paul Krugman1
alongside works
Every retelling 2
Žižek invokes Melville's Bartleby, whose refrain 'I would prefer not to' was spoken facing a Wall Street wall, as the appropriate first gesture for the Occupy movement: a refusal to engage on the system's terms before a new language has been found., illustrating communism as the name of a problem,strategy of withdrawal before new language
35:25 Down with ideology? Talk with Slavoj Žižek | Sternstunde Philosophie | SRF Kultur2016-06-19 · 55:47
His T-shirt bears Melville's formula; the point is that it says 'I would prefer not to', not 'I don't prefer to do it', a non-predicate is asserted, not a predicate denied., illustrating determinate negation,the undead