허먼 멜빌의 「필경사 바틀비」에 나타난 전유로서의 자선 서사

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which the lawyer-narrator appropriates both Bartleby, a scrivener he employs in his office, and himself, a bourgeois capitalist with a strong belief in the Christian principle of pre- determination. Recent criticism of “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” has focused attention on either the potentialities of Bartleby’s passive resistance, “I would prefer not to,” in constructing a new order of social community, or the lawyer-narrator’s self- indulgent story-telling which aggravates the condition of Bartleby as an alienated worker. Borrowing Rahel Jaeggi’s conception of alienation and appropriation, this essay sheds light on the mode of the lawyer-narrator’s restricted and rigid role appropriation in which he fails to become the authentic and genuine self who could truly sympathize with and actively engage in the plight of Bartleby.