Teaching Spivak with "Bartleby"

"Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography" by Gayatri Spivak and "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville is an odd couple, a complicated pairing of texts, though it might seem at first obvious how they could be read together. A lesson with both of these texts could do several things. First we can think about our perspective as readers when we approach "Bartleby" and what kind of spin our ideological dispositions bring to the table. Then, by reading Spivak against Melville, we might consider a more difficult inquiry, what are the limits of our comparison? How do postcolonial subjects differ from hegemonic subjects, even those who are oppressed?

For our first step, we could consider what Spivak proposes at the end of her introduction as the most important consequence of the Subaltern Studies collective's work, that "the agency of change is located in the insurgent or 'subaltern'" instead of colonial authorities (3). Our point of view is critical to how we read literature or history. From the perspective of capitalist ideology, the character of Bartleby might be considered a bum, which some have already suggested, and the story as a whole could be read as a cautionary tale about insubordination that reinscribes the value of work. But from a  a Marxist perspective, "Bartleby" might be read quite differently. Instead of ceding to the dominant narrative, the story would celebrate the refusal of work and stands as an allegory for successful resistance to capitalist domination. This might help us reflexively understand what Spivak is saying when she talks about "reading as active transaction between past and future" (5).

We might also think about how to go about performing this kind of reading. Without a written account from Bartleby's perspective, what material do we have to work from to reconstruct his point of view? How might we measure the effectiveness of his rebellion? Spivak writes "it is only the texts of counter-insurgency or elite documentation that give us the news of the consciousness of the subaltern" (12). Okay, so if we can view "Bartleby" as a text of counter-insurgence, that enables some interesting moves. We might read the story as the production of a moral crisis in the lawyer. The magnitude of the crisis would be the metric of Bartleby's rebellion and tell us a good deal about its effectiveness.

So far this has been pretty fun, but now the critique. First, though Bartleby is exploited, he is certainly not subaltern. I don't think Spivak really provides a definition of the subaltern subject that drives this point home for undergraduate students. In fact, she provides some evidence that might be interpreted to contrary: "What had seemed the historical predicament of the colonial subaltern can be made to become the allegory of the predicament of all thought" (12). So first, let's clarify this point. What dilemma is Spivak talking about here? Is it particularized predicament of the subaltern, or is it a generalized problem of historiography? What from this essay has broader implications, that is, what is a universal critique, and what is specifically related to postcolonial studies? Then, here's a block quote that I would make a slide of to clarify the subaltern subject, definitely not from Wikipedia:

“ . . . subaltern is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for [the] Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie. . . . In post-colonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern. . . . Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern' . . . They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern.”  

The excerpt above is from an interview Spivak did in 1992, and it's much more explicit than the text. With this in mind, what are the limits of our reading Spivak with "Bartleby"? Let's have a conversation about oppression vs. subalternity. What are the particular characteristics of the subaltern subject that differentiate them from Bartleby as a pastiche of exploited workers? How might we then leverage "Subaltern Studies" as a criticism of "Bartleby"?