BARTLEBY AND HIS BROTHERS OR THE POLITICAL ART OF REFUSAL
BARTLEBY AND HIS BROTHERS OR THE POLITICAL ART OF REFUSAL

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the political (and potentially emancipatory) meaning of refusal. Against the dominating philosophical perspective, praising participation and sense of community, it argues that the acts of refusal may (or even must) play an important role in resistance against power. Some elements of a possible theory of refusal are to be found in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, especially in his famous essay on Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, but also in Dialogues (with C. Parnet) and Mille Plateaux (with Félix Guattari), where he coins the crucial concept of becoming-imperceptible.

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