Towards a politics of apathy: Baudrillard, Bartleby, and Adorno.

摘要

This thesis attempts to explore the possibilities for a politics of apathy-as-resistance. Beginning with a schema that distinguishes between two types of apathy, a perpendicular apathy subscript-one and a contiguous apathy subscript-two, this thesis goes on to reread the work of Jean Baudrillard as describing a hypercontemporary political resistance of apathy subscript-two. The second chapter elaborates a close reading of Herman Melville's "Bartleby." By lying at the point where perpendicular and contiguous apathies intersect, the eponymous antagonist of "Bartleby" achieves a form of apathetic resistance potentially more subversive than Baudrillard's. As an 'apathetic crossroads,' Bartleby also servers as the structural centre of this thesis. A discussion of Theodor Adorno's 'strategy' of hibernation constitutes the final chapter. Read as a particularly moral politics of apathy, Adorno's 'strategy' is shown to bear traces of a nostalgic, Neo-Christian asceticism, which mitigate its potential for political resistance.