Sous le signe de l’interruption Individualisme et volonté d’après une nouvelle de Melville

Can we understand some aspects of ­contemporary experience after the formula Bartleby by Melville I would prefer not to ? What happens on that saying ? This article problematizes the self-assertive dimension of the formula, and to suggest an ascetic model of individualism, that exalts the value of the interruption and autarky while being “prohairétique” : a gesture that suspends and which, at first sight, makes itself irrelevant, because it chooses potency instead of immediate enactment.