The Bartleby Experience: Literary Alterity or the Expression of the Inexpressible

Most available conceptualizations of otherness bring us back to the already known, even if, by definition, alterity cannot be expressed in language. In this essay we explore the problem of identifying and addressing literary alterity, using as examples Melville’s enigmatic short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and its sequel, Jack Gilbert’s poem, “Bartleby at the Wall.” Our critical approach is inspired by (rather than modeled on) the work of Emmanuel Lévinas, who defines alterity in terms not of a concept but of a relation between the self and the other discernible only through its effects. Since alterity cannot be represented per se, it can only be pointed to in and through a specific complex that we call the othering situation. This involves a triangular relation of three correlated terms: the sense of something unknown, the exposure of the subject, and the trace. This critical paradigm allows critics both to elucidate the named of their culture and to explore the unnamable.