Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:07:53.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Scandal of Insensibility; or, The Bartleby Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Wendy Anne Lee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reviving Thomas Hobbes's definition of the passions as interior motions that originate action, this essay considers the case of insensibility: an absence of feeling that results in immobility. Embodying this lack of feeling is the figure of the insensible, whose signature nonresponsiveness provokes the most vehement emotions in others. Through readings of Hobbes's theories of resistance and contempt, Adam Smith's condemnation of impassivity, and Herman Melville's tale of an “unmoving” scrivener, I examine how insensibility challenges the model of emotions as causes, as accounts of how a moved body moves. Insensibility confuses distinctions between bad feeling and no feeling, agents and patients, living and dead. Finally, I argue for narrative's surprising dependence on the nonnarrative presence of the insensible, a subject that reaches back through the history of philosophy to Aristotle's unmoved mover, the first cause of the universe that makes all motion possible by not being subject to motion itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 5: Special Topic: Emotions , October 2015 , pp. 1405 - 1419
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Agamben, Giorgio. “Bartleby; or, On Contingency.” Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Ed. and trans. Heller-Roazen, Daniel. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. 243–71. Print.Google Scholar
Altieri, Charles. “Critical Response II: Affect, Intentionality, and Cognition: A Response to Ruth Leys.” Critical Inquiry 38 (2012): 878–81. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Barnes, Jonathan. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Arsić, Branka. Passive Constitutions; or, 7½ Times Bartleby. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Barnum, Phineas Taylor. The Life of P. T. Barnum: Written by Himself, Including His Golden Rules for Money-Making. Buffalo: Courier, 1888. Print.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Smock, Ann. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Coli, Daniela. “Hobbes's Revolution.” Politics and the Passions, 1500-1850. Ed. Kahn, Victoria, Saccamano, Neil, and Coli. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. 75–92. Print.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. “Bartleby; or, The Formula.” Essays Critical and Clinical. Trans. Smith, Daniel W. and Greco, Michael A. London: Verso, 1998. 68–90. Print. Trans. of “Bartleby, ou la Formule.” Critique et clinique. Paris: Minuit, 1993. 89–114.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Trans. Irizarry, Christine. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Print. Trans. of Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Galilée, 2000.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. Passions of the Soul. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Trans. Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, and Murdoch, Dugald. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. 218–38. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotion: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, Julie. Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Emery, Allan Moore. “The Alternatives of Melville's ‘Bartleby.‘” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 31.2 (1976): 170–87. Print.Google Scholar
Gaston, Sean. “The Impossibility of Sympathy.” Eighteenth Century 51.1–2 (2010): 129–52. Print.Google Scholar
Gregg, Melissa, and Seigworth, Gregory J. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” The Affect Theory Reader. Ed. Gregg, and Seigworth, . Durham: Duke UP, 2010. 1–25. Print.Google Scholar
Heller-Roazen, Daniel. The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation. Brooklyn: Zone, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. Ed. Tönnies, Ferdinand. London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1889. Print.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas Elements of Philosophy. Ed. Molesworth, William. London: John Bohn, 1839. Print. Vol. 1 of The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts. Ed. Malcolm, Noel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print. Vol. 4. of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes.Google Scholar
The Holy Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1769. Print. Authorized King James Vers.Google Scholar
James, Susan. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Keats, John. “In drear nighted December.” Complete Poems. Ed. Stillinger, Jack. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. 163. Print.Google Scholar
Kramnick, Jonathan. Actions and Objects from Hobbes to Richardson. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2010. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leijenhorst, Cees. “Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imagination.” The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan. Ed. Patricia Springborg. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 82–108. Print.Google Scholar
Leys, Ruth. “Critical Response II: Affect and Intention: A Reply to William E. Connolly.” Critical Inquiry 37 (2011): 799–805. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leys, Ruth “Critical Response III: Facts and Moods: Reply to My Critics.” Critical Inquiry 38 (2012): 882–91. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leys, Ruth “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry 37 (2011): 434–72. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandeville, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman. “Authentic Anecdotes of ‘Old Zack.‘” Melville, Piazza Tales 212–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Herman “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” Melville, Piazza Tales 13–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Herman The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Hayford, Harrison, Parker, Hershel, and Tanselle, G. Thomas. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman “A New Planet.” Melville, Piazza Tales 445–48.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. Ed. Hayford, Harrison, MacDougall, Alma A., and Tanselle, G. Thomas. Chicago: Northwestern UP; Newberry Lib., 1987. 212–29. Print. Vol. 9 of The Writings of Herman Melville.Google Scholar
Miller, William Ian. The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Orsini, Michael, and Davidson, Joyce. “Introduction: Critical Autism Studies: Notes on an Emerging Field.” Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of Neurological Difference. Ed. Davidson, and Orsini, . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2013. 1–28. Print.Google Scholar
Pinchevski, Amit. “Bartleby's Autism: Wandering along Incommunicability.” Cultural Critique 78 (2011): 27–59. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rancière, Jacques. “Deleuze, Bartleby, and the Literary Formula.” The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing. Trans. Mandell, Charlotte. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004. 146–64. Print.Google Scholar
Reed, Naomi C. “The Specter of Wall Street: ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and the Language of Commodities.” American Literature 76.2 (2004): 247–73. Print.Google Scholar
Rivers, Isabel. Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. “From Passions to Emotions and Sentiments.” Philosophy 57 (1982): 159–72. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruttenburg, Nancy. “‘The Silhouette of a Content’: ‘Bartleby’ and American Literary Specificity.” Melville and Aesthetics. Ed. Otter, Samuel and Sanborn, Geoffrey. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 137–55. Print.Google Scholar
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper earl of. “Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend.” 1709. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Ed. Klein, Lawrence E. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 29–69. Print.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ed. Raphael, D. D. and Macfie, A. L. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Spragens, Thomas A. The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1973. Print.Google Scholar
Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar