Reflections on Simon Critchley's Philosophical Short Cuts (Part 1)

Simon Critchely: Bald (Yale University Press, 2021) 

Essays edited by Peter Catapano 

Cover design by R. Black

 

 

I don't know Simon Critchley: but he's one of the Simons that I can't help admiring and to whom I feel a vague connection, that is part philosophical in nature and part generational; we share many of the same ideas and points of reference and we were all born in the same decade [a]. 

 

Having said that, there are differences between me and the Simons, including Herr Professor Critchley, whose collection of essays Bald (2021) I'd like to discuss here in an amicable if still critical manner. Readers might best see this post then as less the staging of a confrontation or a reckoning [Auseinandersetzung] and more an attempt to offer an insightful commentary in the same kind of engaging, jargon-free - or bold and bald - style that Critchley adopts in this work.  

 

Note: whilst there are thirty-five essays in Bald - all originally published in the New York Times - I'll not be discussing each of them here; just the ones that really catch my interest or which I find particularly provocative [b]. The titles in bold are Critchley's own. And all page numbers refer to the 2021 edition shown above. If the post becomes overly-lengthy - as these posts often do - I'll publish it as two (or possibly even three) parts.   

 

 

Happy Like God  

What is happiness? 

 

In an attempt to answer this question Critchley calls on Rousseau, who provides him with the idea that happiness might simply be the feeling of existence; a feeling that fills the soul entirely. 

 

Perhaps in order to update the language slightly, Critchley reframes this feeling as one of "momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time" [5]. Happiness, in other words, is learning to enjoy the nowness of the present (no regrets and no longing for a better tomorrow). 

 

Achieve a state of joyful reverie and, says Rousseau, you become like God - and Critchley doesn't demur, which is slightly strange for an atheist, but indicates the direction his thinking often takes; i.e., towards secular mysticism (whether this makes him a crypto-theologian more than a critical theorist is a question we can return to later). 

 

And where and when is Critchley happiest? 

 

Sitting by the sea, or in his lover's bed; happiness can be a solitary state, but "one can also experience this feeling of existence in the experience of love" [6]. Maybe: though I'm not sure that love is ever that blissfully straightforward and Critchley is honest enough to admit that even the most oceanic feeling of happiness is outrageously short lived: "Time passes, the reverie ends and the feeling for existence fades." [6].

 

Didn't Goethe once say that no one can enjoy looking at a beautiful sunset for more than a few seconds without getting bored; and I remember also Johnny Rotten once characterising love as less than three minutes of squelching noises. 

 

In other words, we are incapable of being permanently happy (or even happy for long) [c].  

 

 

How to Make It in the Afterlife 

 

As a thanatologist, what I like about Critchley is that, sooner or later and no matter what the topic - he's going to speak about mortality. And sure enough, we quickly pass from happiness to death and the relation between them, which he discusses in relation to ancient Greek philosophy (his other specialist subject). 

 

The key is: live a good life and die a noble death and happiness will be yours. Which means that "happiness does not consist in whatever you might be feeling [...] but in what others feel about you" [13]. 

 

In other words, happiness is something posthumously ascribed - a very unmodern view, but one worth considering; particularly if the adoption of such a view encourages us to live in a more beautiful manner so as to be remembered with smiling fondness.  

 

 

The Gospel According to Me

 

That's a nice title. And it's a crucial short essay attacking the search for individual authenticity, which Critchley rightly recognises is born of a "weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality [...] and a litugy of inwardness" [15]. 

 

This ideal of authenticity - which was central to existentialism before becoming central to New Age therapeutic culture - is basically a type of selfish conformism; something which "disguises acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion" [16]. 

  

Those who think the quest for authenticity is an ethical practice, might be surprised to find Critchley dismiss it as a form of passive nihilism. Passive nihilism and the zen fascism of the 21st century American workplace. For when the office is such a fun place to be and encourages you to be yourself and express yourself, then "there is no room for worker malaise" [17] or class war and in in this way authenticity becomes "an evacuation of history" [17] [d].    

 

I like it when Critchley nails his colours to the mast and pops his political hat on; exposing not just the fantasy of authenticity, but the evils of the workplace - even those that allow us to wear our favourite T-shirt "and listen to Radiohead" [17] on our i-Phones while at our desk. 

 

And I like it too when he relates his philosophical and political critique to literature; pointing out, for example, that Herman Melville, "writing on the cusp of modern capiatlism" [19] in the mid-19th century, had already twigged that "the search for authenticity was a white whale" [19]; i.e., an obsessive quest that is "futile at best and destructive at worst" [19] [e].   

 

 

Abandon (Nearly) All Hope

 

Having demolished the ideal of authenticity, Critchley now attacks the ideal of hope: is it, he asks, such a wonderful thing? 

 

Obviously, I don't think so and I've long been an vociferous opponent of this Christian virtue: see the post dated 6 Feb 2022, for example, on Shep Fairey's Obama poster: click here. Thus, I was pleased to see that Critchley is also hostile to the idea, regarding it from a Graeco-Nietzschean perspective as a form of moral cowardice that "allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering" [20].    

 

Hope, says Critchley - contra Obama - is not audacious; it is mendacious; something exploited by our religious teachers and political leaders alike. And what we need is not blind hope but clear-sighted courage in the face of reality (including the courage to abandon hope). 

 

Or, to put that another way, "skeptical realism, deeply informed by history" [25], that knows how to smile like Epictetus (the slave turned Stoic philosopher admired by Nietzsche).    

 

 

What Is a Philosopher? 

 

An idiot who falls down the well (like Thales); or one who takes their time ...? 

 

Probably a combination of both: 

 

"The philosopher [...] is free by virtue of his otherworldliness, by the capacity to fall into wells and appear silly" and this freedom "consists in either moving freely from topic to topic or simply spending years returning to the same topic" [71] [f].   

 

Critchley endorses this Socratic defnition further by agreeing that the philosopher is also one who is indifferent to convention; shows no respect for rank; never joins a political party or a private club. Of course, this kind of attitude and behaviour can get you in trouble - Socrates  was ultimately put on trial and condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens [g]. 

 

Thus, Critchley (amusingly) decides: "Philosophy should come with the kind of health warning one finds on packs of European cigarettes: PHILOSOPHY KILLS" [72]. 

 

It is thus not only a perverse love of wisdom - a form of erōtomaniā (see below) - but a risking of one's own life; i.e., a practice of joy before death. 

 

Critchley concludes (in a slightly confessional, slightly self-dramatising manner):

 

"Nurtured in freedom and taking their time, there is something dreadfully uncanny about philosophers, something either monstrous or godlike, or, indeed, both at once." [73]

 

 

Cynicism We Can Believe In

 

Ancient cynicism is "not at all cynical in the modern sense of the word" [83], writes Critchley. 

 

And that's certainly true; ancient cynicism was a rigorous philosophical way of life that involved self-debasement in order to make its case, whilst modern cynicism, on the other hand, is "an attitude of negativity and jaded scornfulness" [83]; often no more than a fashionable pose.  

 

The modern cynic isn't expected to live like a dog, eat raw squid, or masturbate in the market place and his cynicism lacks the moral and political radicalism of the hardcore cynicism that Diogenes practiced. 

 

But in a world like ours - self-interested, lazy, corrupt, and greedy - "it is Diogenes's lamp that we need to light our path" [85]. Though I think we can do without the flash-wanking or pissing in public, thank you very much.    

 

 

Let Be - An Answer to Hamlet's Question

 

For Heidegger, letting be [Gelassenheit] is a fundamental granting of freedom, born not of indifference, but an active concern for otherness and a refusal to see the world as something to be manipulated and exploited. In other words, it's a form of care. 

 

Critchley - who certainly knows his Heidegger - prefers to think the idea of letting be in relation to Shakespeare's Hamlet, however. In response to the play's famous ontological question - 'To be, or not to be?' - he says 'Let be'. 

 

But in order to let be, requires, he says, the cultivation of "a disposition of skeptical openness that does not claim to know aught of what we truly know naught" [107]. 

 

He elucidates:  

 

"If we can cure ourselves of our longing for some sort of godlike conspectus of what it means to be human, or our longing for the construction of ourselves as some new prosphetic god through technology, bound by the self-satisfied myth of unlimited human progress, we might let be." [107] 

 

I think we can all agree this would be a good thing. But it's not going to happen, of course; man is the creature who just can't help interfering and organising and wanting to be master of the universe; Homo sapien is also Homo importunus.   

  

 

Notes

 

[a] The other Simons include Reynolds and Armitage - see the post dated 17 Jan 2026: click here - and also the monstrous figure of Síomón Solomon; see the post dated 19 Jan 2026: click here. 

 

[b] Readers will note that I don't, for example, refer to any of the five essays in the section entitled 'I Believe'. Essentially, that's because I don't know anything about (or have much interest in) Mormonism, Russian literature (Dostoevsky), or Danish philosophy (Kierkegaard). 

      Nor do I share the (quasi-religious) faith of a football fan and find Critchley's paean to Liverpool FC a bit cringe if I'm honest. Does he really believe that football teaches us something important about our humanity and that being a Red inculcates a set of purely noble values: "solidarity, compassion, internationalism, decency, honour, self-respect and respect for others" [63] -? (Opposing fans sometimes accuse Liverpool supporters of moralising sentimentality and hypocrisy, but we can leave this for another post, another day.) 

      The essay on money - 'Coin of Praise' - I did read and found myself nodding in agreement with the idea that our financial system essentially rests on faith; i.e., money is the most ideal of all material things and our one true God. But saying that didn't seem to justify an entire section in this post.      

 

[c] See the follow up piece entitled 'Beyond the Sea' (pp. 7-11), in which Critchley addresses some of the comments and criticisms he received from readers of 'Happy Like God'. Crucially, he recognises that happiness in the moment is often topped by happiness of the memory of our happiness in the moment; that the best kind of happiness isn't ecstatic, but melancholic.  

 

[d] Michel Foucault famously dismissed what he called the Californian cult of the self in comparison to the ethico-aesthetic stylisation of self as practiced by the ancient Greeks and modern dandies. See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 359. 

      And see also what Foucault writes on the 'arts of existence' and 'techniques of self' in The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992). 

 

[e] Critchley also refers to his hero Shakespeare, reminding readers that no one is more inauthentic than Hamlet and that the depiction of his radical inauthenticity "shatters our moral complacency" [19] as witnesses to the drama that unfolds.    

 

[f] I would suggest that just as there are two types of philosophical freedom, so too are there are two types of philosopher; I belong to the first type, who flit from topic to topic; my friend Síomón Solomon belongs to the latter type and enjoys the freedom to return and ruminate upon the same problems over and over. This naturally enough produces a different type of thinking and writing style.

 

[g] Critchley notes: "Nothing is more common in the history of philosophy than the accusation of impiety" and philosophy has "repeatedly and persistently been identified with blasphemy against the gods" [72]. Because their attitude is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as one of not giving a fuck, philosophers are often regarded as "politically suspicious, even dangerous" [72].

 

 

Part 2 of this post can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

On Herman Melville's Moby-Dick & Larry David's Mopey Dick

Leon Black / Herman Melville / Moby Dick

 

 

I. 

 

A friend of mine, Anja, has decided to read Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick (1851) between now and the end of May (she plans to digest a chapter a day for the next 135 days).

 

It's not a book that I've read: I've tried, but have never managed to get through more than a few pages. For some reason, I find it irritating. And this, despite the fact that Lawrence describes it as "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" [a].

 

Indeed, in his chapter on the book in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Lawrence also insists that Moby-Dick is "the greatest book of the sea ever written" [146]; a work whose profound symbolism inspires him with a mixture of fear and wonder. 

 

And, let me assure you, that's rare praise coming from Mr. Lawrence, who doesn't often gush about books or their authors. But Melville is, for him, the greatest poet of the sea:

 

"His vision is more real than Swinburne's because he doesn't personify the sea, and far sounder than Joseph Conrad's, because Melville doesn't sentimentalise the ocean and the sea's unfortunates." [122] [b]

      

Perhaps that's because, according to Lawrence, Melville has "the strange, uncanny magic of sea-creatures, and some of their repulsiveness" [122] - i.e., something not quite human. 

 

But never mind Melville, let's focus on the huge white sperm whale, Moby Dick, and discuss what it is that Lawrence finds so fascinating (and yet so terrifying) about these magnificent mammals whose commercial hunting began in the 18th-century and only came to an end in the 1980s [c].   

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, he is more interested in Moby Dick as a symbol. Although, like Melville, Lawrence is not quite sure what the warm-blooded whale symbolises. 

 

But that doesn't prevent him from declaring Moby Dick to essentially be a phallic symbol; "the deepest blood-being of the white race [...] our deepest blood-nature" [146]. 

 

And the fact that he is so cruelly and relentlessly hunted "by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness" [146] symbolises the fact that we are motivated by a kind of death drive: 

 

"We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal  conscious hunt of ourselves [...] is our doom and our suicide." [146]   

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to our own will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or ideal consciousness.

      Hot-blooded sea-born Moby Dick. Hunted by monomaniacs of the idea." [146]

 

A tragic fate. But one that Lawrence accepts: 

 

"Ah well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me, so I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am." [146]    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, there are some fates worse than the collective doom of a people; worse even than having your leg torn off at the knee, or being drowned at sea. 

 

For example, one can be so heart-broken following a painful separation from a loved one, that one takes to one's bed, depressed, and lacking the energy to do anything. This form of spiritual impotence is what Leon Black famously describes as mopey dick [d]. 

 

Whether the cure for this psycho-physiological condition involves inserting a gerbil into one's anus remains, please note, highly controversial.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'Herman Melville's Moby Dick', in Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 145. 

      Future page references to this text - and to the preceding chapter, 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' - will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Despite his admiration for Melville the artist, Lawrence can't help taking a pop at Melville the man; "a rather tiresome New Englander of the ethical-mystical-transcendentalist sort" [134]; someone often clownish and clumsy as a stylist who writes in sententious bad taste. 

 

[c] Commercial hunting led to the near-extinction of large whales, including sperm whales. The International Whaling Commission only granted the species full protection in 1985 (although hunting by Japan in the northern Pacific Ocean continued until 1988). Recovery has been slow, but remaining sperm whale populations are now large enough that the species is no longer listed as endangered. 

 

[d] See the season 6 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'The Bat Mitzvah', dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, and first broadcast on 11 November 2007: click here. The character Leon Black is played by J. B. Smoove.

 

 

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From The Pedagogy of Seeing to Burnout Society)

Byung-Chul Han in the documentary film Müdigkeitsgesellschaft - 

Byung-Chul Han in Seoul/Berlin (dir. Isabella Gresser, 2015) 

Click here to view a trailer, or here to watch the film in full (with English subtitles)

 

 

III. 

 

I believe it was Cato the Elder who said: 

 

'Never is one more active than when doing nothing; never is one less alone than when by one's self.'

 

And I think I know what he means: namely, that the contemplative life - the concept of which was first introduced into philosophy by Aristotle and developed by the Stoics (before being given a Latin twist by Augustine) - is, in terms of Geistigkeit, the most noble form of existence.

 

Anyhoo, let's return to The Burnout Society (2015), in which Byung-Chul Han gives his interpretation of Cato's dictum. I remind readers that the titles given in bold are Han's own and that page numbers refer to the English edition of the text, translated by Erik Butler and published by the MIT Press.

  

    

IV.

 

The Pedagogy of Seeing

 

Returning to the theme of vita contemplativa, Byung-Chul Han calls on Nietzsche who knew a thing or two about the importance of developing a way of life in which one learns to ignore distractions and resist stimuli. For when one reacts immediately and surrenders to every impulse, one is not only behaving in a vulgar manner, but displaying symptoms of spiritual exhaustion.   

 

However, it's important to note that the vita contemplativa "is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens" [21]; instead, it "offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli" [21]. 

 

In other words, the contemplative life is a sovereign manner of saying No to the world [a]; an active negation of the negative by preferring not to, as Bartleby would have it [b].

 

It's also important to note that it's "an illusion to believe that being more active means being freer" [22]. You're not free if you are obeying every impulse or external stimulus and lack what Nietzsche terms the excluding instincts, without which "action scatters into restless, hyperactive reaction and abreaction" [22]. 

 

It's important to know how to pause and delay; only the machine grinds endlessly on and on and, despite its enormous power, the computer or iPhone is not intelligent; in fact, says Han, it's just a stupid mechanical device insofar as it lacks the ability to daydream.  

 

Perhaps because we can't say No, we are also losing the capacity for rage, a powerful emotion which, according to Han, "puts the present as a whole into question" [22] and is as different from anger as fear is from angst. 

 

In brief, increasing positivization denies all negative energy (evil). And that's a concern, because, as Hegel argued, "negativity is precisely what keeps existence [Dasein] alive" [24]. Or, as Zarathustra says: Man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him. 

 

 

The Bartleby Case

 

I used to hate Melville's Bartleby - as this post from 31 Jan 2013 demonstrates. But I've since changed my mind and now have a greater appreciation for his tale. Indeed, Bartleby's signature phrase, I prefer not to, has even become one of the unofficial slogans of Torpedo the Ark (along with curb your enthusiasm and never trust a hippie). 

 

Han offers us what he terms a pathological reading of the story (rather than a metaphysical or theological interpretation) in relation to his own theories of exhaustion and neurotic hyperactivity. He reads Bartleby's silence and immobility as "symptoms characteristic of neurasthenia" [25] and doesn't much care for the character: "his signature phrase [...] expresses neither the negative potency of not-to nor the instinct for delay and deferral that is essential for 'spirituality'" [25-26].     

 

Of course, Bartleby is still an obedience-subject belonging to disciplinary society (Melville publised the story in 1853), so although he dies in complete isolation, he doesn't develop the symptoms of depression which are the hallmark of our society:   

 

"Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, or fear of failure do not belong to Bartleby's emotional household. Constant self-reproach and self-aggression are unknown to him. He does not face the imperative to be himself that characterizes late-modern achievement society." [26]

 

Ontotheological interpretations of the Bartleby case - like Giorgio Agamben's - are ultimately compromised by their failure to "take note of the change of mental structure [psychischer Strukturwandel] in the present day" [26] [c]. 

 

Further, in a simlar manner to Deleuze, Agamben "elevates Bartleby to a metaphysical position of the highest potency" [27], and it was this giving him angelic or even Christ-like status that used to irritate me also. 

 

Still, whilst I would prefer not to see him in a messianic light, I do think that Bartleby's tale is more than merely a story of exhaustion (it's also a tale of seduction, for example, in which the object extracts its revenge).           

 

 

The Society of Tiredness

 

In order to improve performance and maximise achievement, says Han, we are increasingly relying upon neuro-enhancing drugs and energy drinks. The ironic result: we are generating ever greater levels of fatigue: "The excessiveness of performance enhancement leads to psychic infarctions." [31] 

 

And this can't be good - certainly not if it leads to not only feeling physically exhausted, but mentally tired of everyone and everything. For tiredness of the latter kind leaves us feeling separate and isolated. 

 

If only there could be a shared tiredness; one in which we are not tired of others, but with others; one that brings us back into touch; one that lies beyond exhaustion. Han calls this a tiredness of negative potency. If only we had the chance, at least for one day a week, to just log off and rest; if only we could re-establish the Sabbath (a day of not-doing) and counter the machine-ideal of 24/7.

O for the boredom of a childhood Sunday!

Burnout Society

For Byung-Chul Han, both Kantian and Freudian models of the self are now untenable. 

 

Kant's moral subject who obeys his conscience and wishes to fulfil his duty, has, for example, been replaced by the late-modern achievement subject who has no interest in obedience to the moral law within or any sense of obligation.    

 

Psychoanalysis - a theory designed for a repressive age - is also outmoded:

 

"The Freudian unconscious is not a formation that exists outside of time. It is a product of the disciplinary society, dominated by the negativity of prohibitions and repression, that we have long since left behind." [36]. 

It may still be instructive (and important) to read Kant and Freud - and Han has clearly read a good deal of both authors - but they tell us about passed forms of self and society, not present forms. 

 

But then that could be said of pretty much every author writing before the digital age of information-technology and social media. It's not simply that their thinking is antiquated, but that they have too much character [d], which is why so many young people find them offensive and so many old works - once regarded as classics - now come with trigger warnings.

We need people with character; people who still possess an awareness of Otherness and haven't fallen into solipsism and narcissism; people who can still love and mourn and experience a range of psychic states born of negativity; people who still listen to the voice of their daimon; people who refuse to be hyperactive self-exploiting Letzter Menschen whom Han thinks of as zombies: "too alive to die, and too dead to live" [51].   

Notes

 

[a] In an early post on Torpedo the Ark - published 1 August 2014 - I discussed the importance of being able to say no: click here. 

 

[b] Han offers a critical (and clinical) reading of the Bartleby Case in the following chapter. 

[c] Not having read Agamben's take on the Bartleby case, I can't say if this is fair or not. Readers who wish to investigate this matter further can find Agamben's essay, 'Bartleby, or On Contingency', in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 243-271. 

 

[d] As Han reminds us, for Freud, character "is a phenomenon of negativity" [40] - and thus problematic within an age of woke. Today, speakers with character are accused of hate speech and being no platformed across university campuses by those who demand moral and political correctness (and positivity) at all times. "Today", writes Han, "violence issues more readily from the conformism of consensus than from the antagonism of dissent." [48] 

 

 

To read part one of this post on The Burnout Society, click here.       

I Would Prefer Not To

"He does not resist, he does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him - more, he provokes it ..."

This happens to be Nietzsche writing of Jesus, but it could well be someone commenting on Bartleby the scrivener. Both figures belong to the same type: that of the enigmatic redeemer who sets himself apart from his fellow man and makes himself untouchable and unknowable. 

Bartleby is one of the most discussed figures in American literature, but I find it hard to believe that he is also one of the best loved. For my part, I hate him. I would prefer not to have to explain this dislike or make any further critical analysis of this monstrous and motionless character, but, for the record ...

I hate Bartleby for much the same reason as Judas came to resent Jesus; the former felt in some sense let down by the latter and recognised the denial and subterfuge inherent in the latter's teaching. And so, despite his feelings of love and loyalty, he betrayed him: with a kiss. Bartleby too is ultimately a fraud and a moral fanatic who leads us not towards new life or greater health and happiness, but to suffering, misery and death.

Thus, like Bartleby's employer (and the narrator of his tale), I can't help feeling a  profound repulsion for the scrivener, who, clearly, is a decadent, suffering from some form of incurable disorder. His very presence is a curse and he sucks the joy out of life, just as he casts a general air of gloom over the office premises he refuses to leave. 

Bartleby's ideal is stasis: he is driven by a will to inertia, or what Freud terms a death drive. Thus he seeks to reduce all tension and avoid all conflict; to return, ultimately, to a state of inorganic objecthood: unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring, uneating, unliving. Surprisingly, Deleuze of all people finds this admirable and amusing. Not only does he think of Melville's book as a comical text, but he describes Bartleby as an anti-hero who, with his five-word formula, manages to suspend all operational logic and indicate the very limits of our world.

Deleuze seems to regard Bartleby as that first perfect nihilist whom Nietzsche spoke of and anticipated. But surely Nietzsche's thought of affirmative destruction and an active negation of the negative, is something very different to Bartleby's passive-aggressive 'negativism beyond all negation' ...? 

Deleuze is not wrong to describe Bartleby as Christ-like - "stricken with a constitutive weakness but also with a strange beauty" - the question is whether we think that's a good thing or not. Is it desirable - or even possible - to collectively imitate Bartleby and live as he lives, die as he dies? He surely provides at best a practice for the individual, but not a politics. Thus Deleuze is mistaken to locate a new model of fraternal alliance and immanent utopia in the story of Bartleby the scrivener. He has been seduced by the latter's suffering and martyrdom, but as Nietzsche points out, we should never confuse pain and showmanship with philosophical profundity.

And so, to conclude, Bartleby is not the physician of culture or the "doctor of a sick America" that Deleuze believes him to be. He's just another pale-faced case of retarded puberty and an apolitical idiot, with an instinctive hatred of reality and a morbid fear of being touched. What we need is someone who can teach us how to live in physical relation to one another; not just curl up and die in a corner, or hang naked on a cross.