Toadstools, Bartleby, and Badiou

This article brings together Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” with Lives of Jesus authored by David Strauss and Simon Greenleaf and reads them through Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event. If we bear in mind the raging debates of the time about how to write an historical account of Jesu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Saxby, Justin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2015
In: Religion and the arts
Year: 2015, Volume: 19, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 51-73
Further subjects:B Melville Strauss Badiou Bartleby the Historical Jesus the Event
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:This article brings together Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” with Lives of Jesus authored by David Strauss and Simon Greenleaf and reads them through Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event. If we bear in mind the raging debates of the time about how to write an historical account of Jesus, represented here by Strauss and Greenleaf, Melville’s story about a reclusive law-copyist and his frustrated biographer becomes a set of questions about the nature and purpose of biography. When Badiou’s ideas about the Event are taken into account, “Bartleby” intensifies into an anguished consideration of what to do, or what to write, after a life-altering encounter with an elusive subject who leaves no evidentiary trace.
ISSN:1568-5292
Contains:In: Religion and the arts
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685292-01901003