How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

DELEUZE ONCE FOUND a handy formula for finding this space in one of our most famous tales of refusal: Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself. The fact that the story of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is so widely known speaks to its importance in the cultural imagination. The narrator, a comfortable Wall Street lawyer, hires a copyist named Bartleby, a mild man who performs his duties well enough until asked to check his own writing against an original. Without agitation, Bartleby says he would prefer not to, and from that point on continues to give the same answer when asked to perform a task. He eventually stops working, and then even moving; the lawyer finds that he’s taken up residence in his workspace. At a loss for what to do, the lawyer changes offices, but the next occupant is not so accommodating—he has Bartleby taken to jail. Just as the best part of The Trainee is the stunned Deloitte workers, my favorite parts of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” are the lawyer’s reactions, which so quickly progress from disbelief to despair.