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After the Subject: Reading "Bartleby" with Sloterdijk.

This article essays the posthumanist charge of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by reading it alongside Peter Sloterdijk's essay "Rules for the Human Park." I propose that the latter's delineation of humanism—as an educative, domesticating project sustained by the cultural cir...

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Published in:Philosophy & Literature Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 1 - 23
Main Author: Villiers, Dawid W. de
Format: Literary Criticism
Published: Johns Hopkins University Press Apr2026
Subjects:
Humanism
Melville, Herman, 1819-1891
Subjectivity
Posthumanism
Literary criticism
Philosophers
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: After the Subject: Reading "Bartleby" with Sloterdijk.
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        au: Villiers, Dawid W. de
        affil: Stellenbosch University
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        Humanism
        Melville, Herman, 1819-1891
        Subjectivity
        Posthumanism
        Literary criticism
        Philosophers
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          Humanism
          Melville, Herman, 1819-1891
          Subjectivity
          Posthumanism
          Literary criticism
          Philosophers
      ab: This article essays the posthumanist charge of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by reading it alongside Peter Sloterdijk's essay "Rules for the Human Park." I propose that the latter's delineation of humanism—as an educative, domesticating project sustained by the cultural circulation of edifying letters assumed to tame the disinhibiting impulses of the animal rationale —enables us to consider "Bartleby" as invoking an unsettling, singular limit case that involves the collapse of the inhibiting/disinhibiting binary sustaining the subject of humanism. Within the framework of humanism, Bartleby emerges as aporia rather than problem.
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    language: English
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