Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Teaching Bartleby
Teaching Bartleby
Classroom
Author(s): Gregory Palmerino
Source: College English, Vol. 73, No. 3 (January 2011), pp. 283-302
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790476
Accessed: 20-03-2015 20:59 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College English.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
283
Gregory
"Nothing
so
aggravates
Palmerino
an earnest
person as a passive
?Herman
resistance."
Ever
or present. I imagine
as old as education itself.As Tom March puts it,
apathy is
"Who hasn't heard thatwrenching response so common among young people, the
verbal shrug of complete apathy: 'Whatever'" (16). Even as Iwrite these words, I get
the feeling that I am saying nothing and everything all at once. But a recent experi
ence with one particular student has awakened a realization that I had previously
overlooked or refused for some reason to fully acknowledge, in the same way that
Melville's
Gregory
Palmerino
London,
Connecticut.
College,
where
he met
He
inNew
is awriting specialist and first-yearwriting instructor atMitchell College
also teaches composition as a part-time instructor atManchester
Community
in this essay.
73, Number
3, January 2011
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
284
College English
First
Texts
Donald Murray wrote that allwriting is autobiography, "and that our autobiography
grows from a few deep taproots that are set down into our past in childhood" (67).
like to extendMurray's idea and suggest that all teaching, too, is autobiog
surrogate author, "Ere
raphy. Therefore, in the spirit ofMurray and ofMelville's
I would
appropriate. That
is
Polish descendants,
Everything about that upbringing informsmy teaching: theway my hands gesticu
late lively during discussions; the heightened volume and often sarcastic tone ofmy
voice when I ammaking awry comment; the contorted facial expressions when I am
uncomfortable, challenged, or confused; the crude language and abrasive analogies
that sometimes accompany my outrage and my humor. I bring to the classroom my
early life as a gym rat and my Cold War service in theUnited States military, along
with a personal and professional attitude that at least hopes to loathe pretension
and celebrate authenticity, whatever those evolving concepts inme may be.My love
for literature and my work as a poet inform and strengthen my simple belief that
most of what we need to know can be found in the nature of things. As a result, I
am continually
attempting to stripmyself bare formy students so that Imay better
connect with them and teach them.This approach, of course, can often be awkward
and sometimes embarrassing. But it ismy way ofmodeling formy students what I
vulnerable.
continually asking them to do in theirwriting?be
The student I am about to consider here, however, somehow fell outside that
influencewith a dramatic display of indifference. I suppose that iswhat I have realized
thinking about him: there is an alternative reality inmy classroom that is unaffected
bymy presence, and this one student has made me realize how many more students
seem to be
slipping into it than ever before.
am
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
or me. He
computers for each of the twenty-four registered students. Each class period is
divided evenly for themost part into theory and praxis. In the firsthalf, I present a
range of rhetorical reading and writing skills and strategies, from active reading to
classical appeals to audience, including a class on visual rhetoric; the second half is
directed writing, inwhich the students exercise the concepts with my guidance and
peer support. Over the course of a fifteen-week semester, students are required, by
English department fiat, to write fifteen pages of revised and edited text, through
three separate thesis-based writing assignments. Essays are centered on readings from
an anthology chosen byme that offers diverse renderings of American "myths" (for
example, success, education, freedom) by authors from as early as the nineteenth
century to the present. Students are asked to choose their own readings on which to
base their essays and class discussions. As studentsmove through each writing assign
ment, they collect theirwork in a portfolio for their own ongoing self-assessment and
instructor feedback. Grades are not assigned to individual essays but to the portfolio
as a whole, using a three-pronged assessment approach: revision, progression, and
self-reflection.However, a detailed grading rubric is included in the syllabus based
on Council
did not actually say thewords, but they seemed to emanate from his
would prefer not to."
founded. He
wake?"I
my prior astonishment
the
course, figuring he was just another
subsiding, I surmised he had withdrawn from
student who had dropped one ofmy classes for any number of personal or academic
reasons. To my surprise, he returned.Maybe he has resolved to start anew, I thought.
On the contrary, he continued to operate in the same old frame ofmind, preferring
not towrite. Aftermidterm grading, his attendance remained piebald, and he usually
exited the classroom early after the discussion/lecture portion of class. On the last
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
285
286
College English
Melville's
and time-management strategies that prevent him from succeeding in the college
classroom. But there is something more disquieting going on here. It isnot only that
he and those like him struggle with being college students; most first-year students
I encounter in the classroom do struggle. But he manifested this characteristic in a
way that deviated radically from the norms I have experienced and come to expect
frommy students over the dozen years I have been teaching first-yearcomposition.
As Mariolina
Salvatori and Patricia Donahue
claim, "When the student disappears,
so does the possibility ofmonitoring theoretical self-absorption" (32). Our students'
lives are the first texts thatwe must read as closely as the compositions theywrite.
Otherwise, we will be left reading disembodied words, rather than human com
munication.
Most ofmy composition students increasingly operate with the same dramatic
indifference toward writing as my Bardeby. There are students who would prefer
not to hand inwriting because they are put off by poor
grades, challenging com
or
more
ments,
writing; students who would prefer not to remember to hand in
writing because of their complex and distractable lives; students who would prefer
not towrite multiple drafts because they
disregard time-management strategies or
the honing of an academic work ethic; students who would prefer not tomanually
edit and proofread their essays, relying solely instead on computers for spelling and
grammar checks because they are convinced that writing is simply a mechanical
activity rendered automatic; and finally, students who would prefer not to write
because they have been so tainted, so scared by writing "dead letters" for the first
twelve years of their academic
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
of the composition classroom. They provide diversity, range, challenge, and, oddly
enough, balance: "Their fitsrelieve each other, like guards," saysMelville's
lawyer
(par. 13).And theymake for a familiar and predictable experience in the composition
classroom. Also, I am quite certain?having
spentmany years as a student myself?
are
me
aswell; it isone of the unavoidable and
they
"reading"
exhilarating challenges
I recognize and accept each time I encounter a classroom fullof dubious faces. In fact,
much of this essay is possible because an individual has emerged who intensely and
completely resisted my preconceptions and expectations in the same way, I believe,
unnamed narrator is challenged by Bardeby. Ironically, my Bardeby has
made me cognizant ofmy comfort, and in turn he has made me uncomfortable.
Recognizing him, thinking about him, and writing about him affordme the
Melville's
Selves
versus
Knowledge
of a Person
has been written and said, for good or ill, on either side of the issue about
our current fascination with technology. As Albert Borgmann cautions, "The very
identity of the human person and the very substance of reality are presumably called
Much
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
287
288
College English
technological
phenomenon
in
words, we live in an increasingly ahistorical world, one that requires, ifnot demands,
that events be electronically filmed, documented, and catalogued, lest they become
non-experiences or,worse, disavowed. The only way the teens could give meaning to
theirmeaningless actwas to videotape it, thereby providing proof to themselves and
others that they had acted. Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer, in Imagination and
Play in theElectronic Age, suggest that exposure to an increasingly audiovisual world
YouTube.
Kristie Fleckenstein observes in her apdy tided book, Embodied Literacies: Imageword
and a Poetics ofTeaching, this
habit
of
spectacle?restricting
us to a decontextualized
and
ahistorical
immediacy?
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
world, words have lost their function in conveying an individual's lived experience and
therefore itsplace in thoughtful action. In the final analysis, technology allows many
people to act (or not act) with impunity because their (in)actions are not ingrained
through animate language but inanimate technology. "But, with language," Fleck
enstein insists, "we can be the observer of our own participation, dipping into that
stream of experience atwill and
on that stream. [...] Furthermore,
reflecting
language
offers us the possibility of reality testing" (28, 29). The anecdote I recounted, then,
is indicative ofmy Bardeby's behavior and amajor indication of the shiftingtide of
our students'
angle of vision toward reality: the technological experience is a more
state
of reality because it is less discriminating, that is, less judgmental.
acceptable
of material
language.
Regrettably, the lifeline that is required to pull students up into the conscious
world ofmeaning has been yanked away by the ease and comfort of technology, which
is
is not only the opposite of the learning process, but opposed to it.Technology
unquestioning and indifferent. It is antisocial. Arguments that claim all non-human,
that is,nonverbal, forms of communication as technology miss the point. There are
must be accounted for.The act of learn
degrees of separation and complexity that
a
act. It forces us to
ing and of learning how towrite, specifically, is uniquely human
an "other." That other can be either the individual self or the larger social
recognize
audience. In either case, the human being is (and must remain) the hinge. Writing
is such an intimate affair, and by extension so is the teaching of writing. Without
the body's corporeal presence, what kind of ends can be achieved? According to
Fleckenstein, "[W]e need to position ourselves within the fusion of image and word,
within
imageword
so thatwe write-read
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
289
College English
mean
body's presence. As such, it threatens effective teaching, active students, and
ingful compositions.
Ifwe are so intent on removing themessy process of presence from learning in
general, how then can we expect our students in the composition classroom to take
us
we extol the virtues of writing as a process, which is ostensibly
seriously when
filledwith fitsand starts,uncertainty, dead ends, new beginnings?life? Such a notion
reminds me of another nineteenth-century writer who made a similar observation
about surgical operations:
Surgeonsmust be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath theirfine incisions
Stirs theCulprit?Life!
are conditions
Emily Dickinson was well aware of the fact that disease and sickness
of a living, breathing human being, and thatwhen one seeks to rid the body of its
ailments, one is cutting out what is a component of one's embodied experience. In
many ways, composition teachers are like surgeons, and they need to perform their
functionwith the same kind of care and awareness. Writing isfraught with error. It
ismessy and scary.As such, writing is one of themost purely human acts. Its teaching
and formulation, therefore,must remain as closely connected to the human condition
as possible. Richard Smith describes amore authentic form of philosophical inquiry
ratherthanwithit:"Vividthough
writingthrough
my personalityinthe
technology
classroom may be, students in an e-classroom are unlikely towitness it; likewise, my
interpersonal communication skills are extremely inhibited by the absence of the
nonverbal cues of communication" (418). Although the teacher's personal
expression
is one I relish and one I believe is invaluable, what about the students? One of the
great joys of teaching in today's composition classroom is the opportunity to partake
in itsmultiple displays of diversity: the
sight of different-colored faces; the various
sounds ofmelodious
and exotic dialects; the pungent smells of home and work life;
idiosyncrasies that emerge through attitudes, dress, and mannerisms.
all get washed away with the anonymity and
sterility offered by technology.
the numerous
They
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
Of course, there are those who will say,yes, they all get washed away, but so do bias,
prejudice, discrimination, racism, and sexism.My response? I would much rather
be part of a situation that allows me to personally witness and, I hope, foster an oc
casion when those barriers are smashed?and
student" (qtd. in Smith 30). I certainly would have been deprived of a profound and
transforming learning experience had I not been given the opportunity to feel in
person those sparks (or pangs) frommy Bardeby. I like to think that he also walked
away from the experience with some effect.
There may be an additional explanation here as to why something as obvious
as absenteeism is an ongoing issue in the college classroom and office-hour visits:
unknowable
or unimaginable
late to class do so in the belief that they have not "missed" anything because class
does not start until their self-affirming consciousness arrives. (See AJ Daulerio's
more humorous email exchanges on this topic, between
blog post for one of the
New York University professor Scott Galloway and a not-so-conscious
student.)
That there possibly could be continuity to instruction/discussion of other persons
it.For example, who among us has never sent an email message they
In a composition course where
probably would not have presented face-to-face?
than overcome
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
291
292
College English
time on task is paramount in terms of quality and quantity, this lack of embodied
consciousness is not only self-defeating?it is annihilating.
In his essay "The Human Touch," Lowell Monke explains the disconnect: "What
'Information Age' values tempt us to forget is that all of the information gushing
our electronic networks is abstract; that is, it is all representations, one or
through
more symbolic steps removed from any concrete object or personal experience.
important role inmaking this connection between the abstract and the concrete. In
Buder Yeats expresses the vital role the
four unflappable lines of poetry,William
act
at the same time making an interesting
in
the
of
while
composing,
body plays
comment about the precarious movement
of the postmodern
physical reality:
Hands, do what you're bid;
Bring the balloon of themind
That bellies and drags in thewind
Into
its narrow
shed.
Anyone familiar with Yeats's poetry will understand why he would have been so
concerned with keeping his thoughts grounded in his cranium. There also may be
the seeds here for an interesting argument about keeping the handiwork ofwriting
corporeal presence become. This is an argument about the difference between the
I am con
needleworkers of the Bayeux Tapestry and the performers of YouTube.
vinced that the teaching ofwriting will work best only when we startby subduing the
abstracting qualities of technology rather than uplifting them,mistakenly thinking
that technology is amagical means forfreedom of expression or freedom of any sort.
Individualism
Hyper-Subjective
versus
Democratized
Selves
(Content)
(Context)
The movement
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
effectivemeans for achieving the kind of personal and social freedom I do eventually
want formy students and myself.
non-reality:
The act ofwriting fills the gap between selfand other through language.Writing is,
within thisparadigm, essentiallyaffirmative;it implies thepossibilityof transcending
one's own subjectivity,of escaping solipsism through language. Such an enterprise
must be filledwith doubt, and that iswhere the essay finds its strongestappeal. For
the essay exploits the uncertaintyof thewriter's situation, transforminguncertainty
into a fundamentalquality of the essay form. (100-01)
that places the technological act ahead of thewriter will most often fail to
Writing
"fill the gap" because themedium will remain the message rather than act as the
messenger ofmeaning. In other words, technology accelerates the shift away from
"knowledge of a person" to hyper-subjective individualism by furtherdisembodying
experience from language and inculcating one into the strange reality of involve
ment/noninvolvement, thus dangerously distancing oneself further from democracy.
So much of our daily life is spent surrounded by technological precision thatwe
the idea thatwe are sleepwalking our way through a technological world that is not
of our own making or of our own understanding (57). Technology has become so
invasive and pervasive in our lives thatwe no longer recognize the power ithas over
our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Consider the British Petroleum (BP)
oil disaster or the almost 40,000 motor vehicle deaths each year in theUnited States
because a driver has been rendered unconscious to the fact that he or she is hurtling
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
293
294
College English
"Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem theworld is gay; but misery hides aloof,
so we deem thatmisery there is none," opines Melville's narrator (par. 89).
Kathleen Blake Yancey describes a telling example of the intersection of technol
ogy, students, and writing. In the spring of 2008, thousands ofAdvanced Placement
(AP) students networking on Facebook conspired to play a joke on readers of AP
exams by writing the phrases "This is Sparta" and "This isMadness"?two
phrases
answers.
One
substitute
of
could
actual
that cry out for explication?in
easily
place
the phrase "I would prefer not to" with the ones the students used, because they
were responding correcdy to a system, the education system no less, that is supposed
to be embracing them as future thinkers, citizens, leaders, and potentially better and
freer human beings. However, the students involved never really "jeopardized" their
performance on, or their relationship to, the test (Jacobs par. 10). Felicia Wu Song,
in her article "Social Networking Sites," describes the disembodying effects caused
by the ubiquitous phenomena of discourse communities likeFacebook
(and more recendy Twitter):
andMySpace
"community"
in terms ofmultiple
and acquain
As I hope tomake clear later, those Facebook students are wannabe Bartlebys. To
have trulyperformed a courageous and significant act of composing, theywould have
insisted on refusing to take the test altogether. In that case, theywould have forced
a true human response from their readers rather than the
meaningless
toothless annoyances they ultimately produced.
chuckles and
report) leave the best and brightest to believe that something actually important has
taken place, that people have joined together and accomplished something meaning
is the difference between
ful,when in fact it is simply a prank to get noticed. What
these Facebook students who defaced a test and those two teens I described earlier
who vandalized a home and filmed their delinquent act? Both acts were recorded,
validated by some smart people, and received a lot of attention. Is thatwhat quali
fies as a democratic act of composing? I am heartened, however,
by one ofYancey's
more conclusive explanations as to
AP
act
the
students
in thismanner:
would
why
"they wanted not a testing reader, but a human one" (6).
Kenneth Goldsmith ismuch more direct in his
sundering of the individual and
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
immersive
digital
environment
demands
new
responses
from writers.
[...]
Identity,
forone, isup forgrabs.Why use your own words when you can expressyourself just
aswell by using someone else's? And ifyour identityisnot your own, then
sincerity
must be tossed out aswell. Materiality, too, comes to the fore: the quantity ofwords
seems to have more bearing on a poem thanwhat theymean. Disposability, fluidity,
and recycling:
aren't meant
there's a sense that these words
for forever. Today
to a page but tomorrow
as a Facebook
meme.
they could re-emerge
glued
they're
It is
[...]
The
that exist in a rapidly changing and increasingly technologically dependent global and
local environments," students need tomaster certain skill sets as "the next generation
of potential employees" so that they can "assume their role as literate, global citizens
in the 21st century" (Selfe and Selfe 85, 86; emphasis added). Are we interested
in assimilating technology into the composition classroom because it satisfies the
or because it fulfills the de
emerging intelligence of the human being, qua human,
sires of technology/industry, fitting students like cogs into an increasingly obviously
on multinational corporations and international financial
dysfunctional world built
institutions? In "The Database
amore
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
295
296
College English
Truth.
(Engell 174).
Students like the ones Yancey cites are righdy grasping at a lifeline of authen
tic, concrete human communication, one that reinforces human values rather than
undermines it.Unfortunately, they are not conscious of this desire because technol
at once their
ogy?their all-encompassing and ubiquitous means of expression?is
to
lifeline and their anchor. It is the job of the composition teacher
make them
conscious of the fact that their heads may actually be under water. What isneeded in
the composition classroom is not a search formore ways to incorporate technology.
is needed ismore human relevance.
What
It seems like an obvious point, but the desire for relevant human experience
through language has to consciously and vigorously contain technology. Otherwise,
our composition classrooms will come to look more and more likewhat Mark Ed
to theNew Humanities
has satirically described in his essay, "AWord
Professor." I quote the entire passage to allow the author's sardonic wit and prescient
comment to shine through.
mundson
poverty,
and neglect.
Every
course
you
teach
should
thus be computer-oriented.
www.blakesweeper.edu.
(31)
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
When
that satisfies individual schedules and appetites ("NewsWar"). The term itself should
reveal justhow much sustenance can be obtained from ingesting information?even
profound information?in thishyper-subjective and disembodied way. Nicholas Carr,
for instance, makes an interesting case in his book The Shallows: What the Internet
Is Doing toOur Brains for the dramatic and sustained ebb the human mind may be
experiencing.Writing for theWall StreetJournal online, he states, "[A] growing body
of scientific evidence suggests that theNet, with its constant distractions and inter
ruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers" (par. 1).Much of
a nineteenth-century scrivener? Some readers may argue that the budding Blakeans
have built important and indispensable skills in teamwork, in research, in organiza
tion, and, of course, in technical know-how?skills
highly valued in the jobmarket,
which iswhat industry, including academia, says we are supposed to be preparing
students for as educators. As Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe explain, "In an
not
increasingly technological world, students need to be experienced and skilled
com
only in reading (consuming) texts employing multiple modalities, but also in
scrivener, on the other hand, merely copies what someone else wrote. True enough.
But what employer in our corporation-saturated world craves employees who are
capable of and encouraged to scrutinize and challenge information from "within"?
If the current corporate ethos says, "Workers of theworld, give us what we want!"
thenwhere will students learn how to challenge when they are taught only how to
communicate within?
Peter Coy, economics editor atBusinessWeek magazine, commented on journal
ism's role in the global financial meltdown in an interview on the PBS News Hour:
.
"[T]he one thing I would plead guilty to is [. .] a failure of imagination. If you
went back and read [BusinessWeek's] stories, the stories we wrote, ifwe had drawn
the logical implications of what we ourselves had written, we probably would have
been more bearish" ("Debate" par. 51). First, Iwould be remiss ifI did not mention
thatMelville's
Street," but I leave it to others to take
story is also "A Story ofWall
is
always ready to go, as ismost great
Bardeby into themyriad directions his tale
literature (see Carol Jago's report, Crash! The Currency Crisis inAmerican Culture).
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
297
298
College English
More
munication,
(context/place) rather than how many ways there are to compose (content/mode).
I have attempted to show how the lack of presence in our society and our
believe
and our lovers. Thus writing and writing instruction are acts thatmust embrace
the human realities of contingency and fallibility rather than try to pass them off as
realities characteristic of technology, which often negates them or, worse, attempts
to expunge them. Otherwise, the texts that composition students will learn to create
will be essentially "dead letters" in the same way a copied legal document is dead
to a
nineteenth-century scrivener. "Dead letters! does itnot sound like dead men?"
decries Melville's narrator (par. 250). In short, technology must remain a
subject of
to
even
as
we
be
scrutinized
and
to
continue
composition
constandy
interrogated
use
is the
Bartleby and my passive-resistant student?Where
connection? Is themeaningless work of a
an
scrivener
nineteenth-century
example
ofmodern-day composing? Are industrial age office conditions the same as techno
logical age classroom circumstances? Is Bardeby's end my student's end? First, the
obvious point that great authors do not refrain from killing theirmain characters so
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Opinion:
Teaching
Bartleby
toWrite
that their readers will retain some sense of hope; on the contrary, they kill off their
creations because they are trying to teach us something about life.For years I thought
thatMelville's
storywas a character study inmental illness. Bardeby's retreat is a
descent intomadness, a metamorphosis not unlike the one Franz Kafka's Gregor
I now see that Bardeby is the only mind full character in the story.
is
end
the result of an automated and dehumanizing workload, workspace,
Bardeby's
and world. He realizes this condition and refuses to continue to participate in its
sion. However,
design. His is an act of clarity and defiance. Slavoj Zizek suggests that Bardeby's "I
would prefer not to" is "the gesture of subtraction at its purest, the reduction of all
a
hyper-subjective individualism. He is acting from desire for human relevance. My
not experience freedom. Hence, his passive resistance
Bardeby feelsfree, but he does
as the "human stasis" of postmodern life,what
more
described
be
may
accurately
humanness?when,
in reality,
him: the "cool tranquility of a snug retreat" (par. 3) he has worked so diligendy to
achieve over the course of his law career is not one of fulfillment, as he originally
overtures of accommodation and
thought, but of confinement. Bardeby refuses all
remediation from his employer because he no longer sees him as anything other
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
299
300
College English
than another example for his fatal choice: his employer is doing unconsciously what
to death. Once Bartleby decides to cease to
Bartleby is doing consciously?speeding
ceases
to exist; in other words, the dead cannot
exist, everything and everyone else
offer, nor can they accept, help from the dead. The letters invoked at the conclu
sion of the story symbolize the fine line between life in death and death in life: "On
errands of life, these letters speed to death" (par. 250). The letters themselves?at
Without
useless. Disembodied
Melville's
is a metaphor
such, I am under no illusion that I have accurately captured themind or life of the
individual about whom I have written. However, we have reached the point ofmy
true discovery: / have been subtracted.My
just another meaningless, faceless abstraction: two postmodern texts drifting in and
out ofmeaningless contexts. In other words, the cart has been put firmly before the
horses, and I was not conscious of this possibility until I encountered my Bardeby.
All thewhile, it seems, my freedom has been the one jeopardized. That is a conclu
completely mindful of the fact that theworld continues to turn and that technology
is not going away. This essay ismade possible because of technology, not in spite of
it, and I recognize and welcome its benefits wholeheartedly for teachers of writing
Opinion:
Teaching
toWrite
Bartleby
301
ease and comfort as well as its promise. If this all sounds too
curmudgeonly or too
deterministic for some, Iwill end with a reminder from Jacques Ellul, author of The
now know is as important for composition teachers as
Technological Society,which I
it is for students of composition: "Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested
interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns him
self, he becomes subject to determinism. He ismost enslaved when he thinks he is
comfortably settled infreedom. [...] It isnot a question of getting rid of [technology],
but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it" (xxxiii). Let us, now, prefer towrite.
*****
like to thank John Schilb and the reviewer for their guidance
Colbath
Works
Cited
Paul Virilio's
John. "Beyond Postmodernism?:
1
15
Nov.
2000.
Web.
Apr. 2010.
ctheory.net,
Armitage,
Baudrillard,
Chris Turner.
Hypermodern
New
Cultural
York: Verso,
Theory."
ctheory.net.
1996. Print.
Review
"On the Blessings of Calamity and the Burdens of Good Fortune." Hedgehog
10 Oct. 2008.
Studies inCulture. Web.
7-24. Institute forAdvanced
Albert.
Borgmann,
4.3 (2002):
Carr, Nicholas.
"Does
Company,
You Dumber?"
5 Jun. 2010.
So Special." MSNBC.com.
wsj.com. Wall
MSNBC.com,
Jones &
2007. Web.
26 Jan.
1 Sept. 2008.
vanced Studies in Culture. Web.
22
the Art of Email Flaming." Deadspin. N.p.,
Daulerio,
AJ. "NYU Business Professor Has Mastered
1Mar.
2010.
Feb. 2010. Web.
"
Online NewsHour.
Public Broadcasting
Role in Financial Meltdown."
Debate Emerges over Media's
Service, MacNeil/Lehrer
Dickinson,
Aug.
Emily.
2010.
Productions,
13Mar.
2009. Web.
14 Apr.
to theNew Humanities
"AWord
Edmundson, Mark.
Studies in Culture. Web.
Institute forAdvanced
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Trans.
Engell, James. The Committed Word:
1999. Print.
UP,
Literature
2009.
Poetry Foundation.
Professor." Hedgehog
15 Sept. 2006.
JohnWilkinson.
New
Review
York: Knopf,
Web.
2.3 (2000):
19
24-35.
1967. Print.
Park: Pennsylvania
State
Southern
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
302
College English
Goldsmith,
to the 21st
Is Apollo. An Introduction
"Flarf Is Dionysus.
Conceptual Writing
1July
Controversial Poetry Movements."poetryfoundation.org.
Poetry Foundation,
Kenneth.
Century's Most
2009.Web. 31July2009.
Jacobs, Erica.
Group
Jago, Carol.
as Articulation."
"The Database
and the Essay: Understanding
Composition
Theory and Applications for Expanding theTeaching ofComposition. Anne Frances
Johndan Johnson-Eilola,
Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sire. Logan, UT: Utah State
Wysocki,
UP, 2004. 199-236. Print.
Johndan.
Writing New Media:
Johnson-Eilola,
Jan. 2005-06):
Melville,
Herman.
2.12
546-57;
"Bartleby
(Dec.
M.
Donald
"News War:
Touch."
isAutobiography."
"AllWriting
Orwell, George.
Education Next
1949. New
4.4
CCC
Educational
Leadership 63 A
42.1
2.11 (Nov.
(Dec
1853):
(2004):
(1991):
Foundation,
York: Plume,
20 Jan. 2009.
1853): 609-15.
Lowell.
"The Human
Monke,
15Feb2009.
Web.
Murray,
Educational
Tom.
March,
66-74.
27 Feb.
Print.
1Apr.
2007. Web.
2009.
2003. Print.
to
Technology. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print.
to the
Essay." Issues inWriting 1.2 (Spring 1989): 99-119. Print.
Postman, Neil.
E. "A Dialogic
Recchio, Thomas
Salvatori, Mariolina
Composition
Approach
"Disappearing
25-33. Print.
Acts: The
Problem
of the Student
in
"Abstraction
25.1-2
and Finitude:
(2006):
"Social Networking
Sites: Mirrors
of Contemporary
1 Feb 2009.
Review] 2.1 (2008): 3-4.Web.
11Nov.
Individualism."
Langdon.
"Technologies
and Laura Westra.
Lanham:
Yancey, Kathleen
2009.Web.
Yeats, William
Zizek,
Butler.
"The Balloon
Culture
[now
Composition:
as Forms of Life."
Technology and Values. Ed. Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. 55-69. Print.
Blake. Writing
15Mar.
2009.
Harvard
of theMind."
View. Cambridge:
MIT
Mar.
2009.
Feb.
Bartleby.com. Web.
19 Aug.
2010.
P, 2006. Print.
This content downloaded from 205.173.218.10 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:59:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions