THE MACHINE IN THE MACHINE: DECONSTRUCTIONS OF SOCIAL AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURES IN HERMAN MELVILLE’S “BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER” AND MACHADO DE ASSIS’S THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS

Abstract

This paper reflects on the mechanicality of machines produced by advances in industrialization in the nineteenth century and its turn on human subjectivity, considering the Cartesian relationship between body and mind translated by Gilbert Ryle as “the Ghost in the Machine” (1966). Concerning the lieu of the narrator in literature, the premise of this paper is to propose a reading of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) and Machado de Assis’s novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) as a precursor to the deconstruction brought by twentieth-century scholars such as Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. The aim is to show how the narrativity proposed by Machado and Melville is a way of dismantling the very narrative as well as producing social criticism.