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Article Dans Une Revue L'Epoque Conradienne Année : 2012

Impossible placement in “The Anarchist : A Desperate Tale” de Joseph Conrad

Résumé

This article reads the short-story "The anarchist" by Conrad and its protagonist in the light of Giorgoio Agamben's "Homo Sacer", for the mechanic, in the eyes of the manager is both precious and disgusting, a refuse he yet cannot dispense with. This position, as well as the experience he tells, reveals the Lacanian "jouissance" that moves the cogs and wheels of capitalist society, the embedded story paradoxically providing a framework to the framing story which tells us about the company. But the tale eventually proveds even more radical and anarchic, for not only does it undermine the bases of capitalist society but also those of representation and language itself, thereby showing a parentage with Melville's Bartelby. Indeed the mechanic's set phrase "I deny nothing" cannot but recall Bartleby's "I would prefer not to". The phrase, allowing for any placement, forbids them all and eventually cancels the very possibility of ever coming to any understanding.
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hal-02502082 , version 1 (08-03-2020)

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  • HAL Id : hal-02502082 , version 1

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Catherine Delesalle-Nancey. Impossible placement in “The Anarchist : A Desperate Tale” de Joseph Conrad. L'Epoque Conradienne, 2012, 38. ⟨hal-02502082⟩
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