Follow Your Leader - I Prefer not to: Slavery, Giorgio Agamben and Herman Melville

Abstract

Giorgio Agamben proffers Bartleby’s phrase “I prefer not to” as a model for paralyzing apparatuses of power rather than slave mutiny leader Babo’s phrase “follow your leader.” This article compares the strategies embodied in these characters from Herman Melville’s work of non-cooperation with versus violent resistance to violence. it argues that because the slave-figure is the shadow image of the free human in liberal democratic thought, violence is an illusory basis for emancipation. Such violence would not only be a mimicry of the oppressor by the oppressed but also relies on political theodicy in justifying violence as a necessary evil.