I would prefer not to: How Bartleby's formula troubles collective design practices

Herman Melville writes a curious and highly spatialised story of a scrivener, or law-copyist, called Bartleby, who troubles the limits of collective expression through the deployment of a singular phrase. The story of Bartleby and his infamous formula of passive resistance has been commented upon at length by such philosophers as Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, and the philosopher of science, Isabelle Stengers. Each of these thinkers reflect upon the passive power of Bartleby¿s formula given as: I would prefer not to. This paper will draw on their remarks and what relation Bartleby¿s passivity has to the formation and limits of collective and creative modes of expression.