1 Phenomenology of Bartleby Arthur Willemse Introduction The philosophy of Giorgio Agamben – philosophical archaeology – presents an intriguing combination of phenomenology and deconstruction. For Agamben, the phenomenon is only ultimately given in the exposure of its archē – its moment of arising and fulfilment. However, this moment of archē means also, by a Hegelian influence, the disintegration of the phenomenon’ s vitality. The phenomenon, then, is rendered inoperative in the act of its understanding. In this sense Agamben’s archaeology seems an inverted phenomenology, its work spent unearthing the phenomenon in the first place – while it is not, in the first place, phenomenal – analysing the way in which a concept is withheld, rather than the way in which it is given. Agamben’s oeuvre is entirely a philosophical archaeology on the concept of potentiality – the quintessentially withheld or reserved concept. The pivotal figure in this archaeology, I argue, is the figure of Herman Melville’s scribe Bartleby and his passion for writing that Agamben inter prets in an essay DzBartleby, or On Contingency . dz By focussing on the figure of Bartleby we get the clearest account of potentiality – Bartleby’s formula DzI would prefer not todz insists on his capacity for writing – and yet we gather the ways in which that potentiality is exactly not given, but suffered on the white sheet of Bartleby’s body . By way of Bartleby’s formula Agamben is able to unearth the concept of potentiality from a philosophical history that, on his reading, has only meant to obscure it – has meant to keep its operation secret. What Bartleby releases from the spell of potentiality is a contingent existence: redeemed of potentiality, it has fulfilled its capacity to not be.