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Meaningless Work with Words: The Plight of the Literary Scribe
ISBN
978-9928-274-48-9
Type
book section
Date Issued
2021-01
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Hadri, Albana
Bushgjokaj, Arben
Erkoçi, Ilda
Abstract
This paper argues that literary scribes constitute a fertile ground for understanding (post)modern transformations concerning the relationship between sign and referent.
Scribes are not supposed to be concerned with the signified, but merely with the transposition of the signifier as signifier from one medium to the other - a mechanical work that, by decoupling the signifier from its signified, turns meaningful words into meaningless objects for the sake of profit generation. Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) and Amy Rowland’s The Transcriptionist (2014) are two narratives about scribes that implicitly discuss the mechanisms of decoupling the linguistic sign from its referent and speculate about the repercussions. The scrivener and the transcriptionist, the one at the beginning and the other at the erstwhile end of industrial capitalism, thus enter into the discourse about an economic system that shows its ultimately inhuman foundations in its treatment of its human collaborators, who first have to adapt to machine-logic and then, when machine-logic is all-pervasive, are being replaced by machines altogether. Moreover, the scribes seem to warn us that the “liquidation of all referentials” (Baudrillard) threatens to deprive human beings of meaningful, intersubjective language. Yet, as human beings are each the zoon logon echon, an animal that has language, this threat to language could amount to an existential threat to humanity itself.
Scribes are not supposed to be concerned with the signified, but merely with the transposition of the signifier as signifier from one medium to the other - a mechanical work that, by decoupling the signifier from its signified, turns meaningful words into meaningless objects for the sake of profit generation. Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) and Amy Rowland’s The Transcriptionist (2014) are two narratives about scribes that implicitly discuss the mechanisms of decoupling the linguistic sign from its referent and speculate about the repercussions. The scrivener and the transcriptionist, the one at the beginning and the other at the erstwhile end of industrial capitalism, thus enter into the discourse about an economic system that shows its ultimately inhuman foundations in its treatment of its human collaborators, who first have to adapt to machine-logic and then, when machine-logic is all-pervasive, are being replaced by machines altogether. Moreover, the scribes seem to warn us that the “liquidation of all referentials” (Baudrillard) threatens to deprive human beings of meaningful, intersubjective language. Yet, as human beings are each the zoon logon echon, an animal that has language, this threat to language could amount to an existential threat to humanity itself.
Language
English
Keywords
(Post)modernity
Sign and Referent
Office Novel
Bartleby
Amy Rowland The Transcriptionist
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Book title
The Power of Language
Publisher
Fiorentia
Publisher place
Shkodër
Start page
38
End page
56
Pages
19
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
sixta.quassdorf@unisg.ch
References
References
Arendt, Hannah. Vita Activa, oder vom tätigen Leben. München: Piper, 1967.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Transl. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994 [1981].
Benack, Carolin. “Subtraction from Supply and Demand: Challenges to Economic Theory, Representational Power, and Systems of Reference in Melville's ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’.” Aspeers, vol. 8, 2015, pp. 27-47.
Berardi, Franco. The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Transl. Jason E. Smith. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009. [Foreign Agents Series].
Beverungen, Armin and Stephen Dunne. “‘I'd Prefer Not To’. Bartleby and the Excesses of Interpretation.” Culture and Organization, vol. 13 no. 2, 2007, pp. 171-183.
Briant, Emma. Propaganda and counter-terrorism: Strategies for global change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Campbell, Patricia J., Aran MacKinnon and Christy R. Stevens. An Introduction to Global Studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2011.
Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Bartleby; or, The Formula.” Essays Critical and Clinical. Transl. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. London, New York: Verso, 1998, pp. 68-90.
Foley, Barbara. "From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville's ‘Bartleby’." American Literature, vol. 72 no. 1, 2000, pp. 87-116.
Grice, Paul Herbert. “Logic and Conversation.” Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1989 [1975], pp. 22-40.
Grice, Paul Herbert. “Meaning.” Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1989 [1957], pp. 213-23.
Guillen, Matthew. “Melville’s Wall Street: It Speaks for Itself.” Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle, vol. 36, 2001, pp. 9–24.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991.
Knighton, Andrew. "The Bartleby Industry and Bartleby’s Idleness." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, vol. 1 no. 2, 2007, pp. 184-215.
Kuebrich, David. “Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in ‘Bartleby.’” The New England Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 3, 1996, pp. 381–405.
Langacker, Ronald. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
McCall, Dan. The Silence of Bartleby. Cornell University Press, 1989.
Melville, Herman. ”Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street.” Herman Melville. Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Uncollected Prose, Billy Budd, Sailor. New York: The Library of America, 1984 [1853], pp. 635-672.
Kiyimba Nikki and Michelle O’Reilly. “An Exploration of the Possibility for Secondary Traumatic Stress among Transcriptionists: A Grounded Theory Approach.” Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 13 no. 1, 2016, pp. 92-108.
Pham, Larissa. ”The Business of Survival - Ling Ma’s Disaster Fiction.” The Nation, October 2, 2018.
Reed, Naomi C. "The Specter of Wall Street: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the Language of Commodities." American Literature, vol. 76 no. 2, 2004, p. 247-273.
Rowland, Amy. The Transcriptionist. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2014.
Sennett, Richard. The Culture of New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication & Cognition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007 [1995].
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Doing Justice to Bartleby.” A Journal of American Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture, vol. 17 no. 1, 2003, pp. 23-42.
Wilkes, Lesley; Cummings, Joanne; Haigh, Carol. “Transcriptionist Saturation: Knowing Too Much about Sensitive Health and Social Data.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 71 no. 2, 2015, pp. 295–303.
Wurman, Richard Saul. Information Anxiety. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Notes Towards a Politics of Bartleby: The Ignorance of Chicken.” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, vol. 4 no. 2, 2006, pp. 375-394.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books, 2019.
Arendt, Hannah. Vita Activa, oder vom tätigen Leben. München: Piper, 1967.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Transl. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994 [1981].
Benack, Carolin. “Subtraction from Supply and Demand: Challenges to Economic Theory, Representational Power, and Systems of Reference in Melville's ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’.” Aspeers, vol. 8, 2015, pp. 27-47.
Berardi, Franco. The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Transl. Jason E. Smith. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009. [Foreign Agents Series].
Beverungen, Armin and Stephen Dunne. “‘I'd Prefer Not To’. Bartleby and the Excesses of Interpretation.” Culture and Organization, vol. 13 no. 2, 2007, pp. 171-183.
Briant, Emma. Propaganda and counter-terrorism: Strategies for global change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Campbell, Patricia J., Aran MacKinnon and Christy R. Stevens. An Introduction to Global Studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2011.
Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Bartleby; or, The Formula.” Essays Critical and Clinical. Transl. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. London, New York: Verso, 1998, pp. 68-90.
Foley, Barbara. "From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville's ‘Bartleby’." American Literature, vol. 72 no. 1, 2000, pp. 87-116.
Grice, Paul Herbert. “Logic and Conversation.” Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1989 [1975], pp. 22-40.
Grice, Paul Herbert. “Meaning.” Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1989 [1957], pp. 213-23.
Guillen, Matthew. “Melville’s Wall Street: It Speaks for Itself.” Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle, vol. 36, 2001, pp. 9–24.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991.
Knighton, Andrew. "The Bartleby Industry and Bartleby’s Idleness." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, vol. 1 no. 2, 2007, pp. 184-215.
Kuebrich, David. “Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in ‘Bartleby.’” The New England Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 3, 1996, pp. 381–405.
Langacker, Ronald. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
McCall, Dan. The Silence of Bartleby. Cornell University Press, 1989.
Melville, Herman. ”Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street.” Herman Melville. Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Uncollected Prose, Billy Budd, Sailor. New York: The Library of America, 1984 [1853], pp. 635-672.
Kiyimba Nikki and Michelle O’Reilly. “An Exploration of the Possibility for Secondary Traumatic Stress among Transcriptionists: A Grounded Theory Approach.” Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 13 no. 1, 2016, pp. 92-108.
Pham, Larissa. ”The Business of Survival - Ling Ma’s Disaster Fiction.” The Nation, October 2, 2018.
Reed, Naomi C. "The Specter of Wall Street: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the Language of Commodities." American Literature, vol. 76 no. 2, 2004, p. 247-273.
Rowland, Amy. The Transcriptionist. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2014.
Sennett, Richard. The Culture of New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication & Cognition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007 [1995].
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Doing Justice to Bartleby.” A Journal of American Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture, vol. 17 no. 1, 2003, pp. 23-42.
Wilkes, Lesley; Cummings, Joanne; Haigh, Carol. “Transcriptionist Saturation: Knowing Too Much about Sensitive Health and Social Data.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 71 no. 2, 2015, pp. 295–303.
Wurman, Richard Saul. Information Anxiety. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Notes Towards a Politics of Bartleby: The Ignorance of Chicken.” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, vol. 4 no. 2, 2006, pp. 375-394.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books, 2019.
Additional Information
Book of Proceedings: 3rd International Conference, 22-23 November 2019, Skodër, Albania.
Eprints ID
262178