爾維爾在其短篇小說〈抄寫員巴托比〉中批判西方政經系統試圖建立同質性世界的努力。在紐約華爾街工作的巴托比所面對是一純然為絕對經濟理性所宰制的世界兼併、挪用、並消化所有異質性的他者，而巴托比的存在暴露出既有宰制系統內部的不足與盲點。在本文中所有的抄寫員皆身處在禁閉的空間裏、並在敘述者的凝視下辛勤工作，以符合經濟理性的生產、分配與獎懲原則；他們的身體被投資在政經符號的場域中，因為權力關係直接控制、標定、訓練他們，逼迫他們在交換系統中不斷被轉換成符號、並製造符號。後啟蒙西方世界的工作倫理是建立在利己的概念上：馬克思主義或古典政治經濟學、俗化的基督教道德觀或功利主義的倫理學皆視個人為據有強烈利己傾向、可以被組織的個體；然而怪異的巴托比洛拒絕工作，因此他的存在被視為對主流倫理觀念與經濟理性的挑戰。透過巴托比注失敗的努力與悖離常理的行逕，本文暴露出貌似良善的工作倫理裏壓制的本質與其對人性的扭曲，並同時呈現出人類追求絕對自由的不可能性與荒謬性。

The homogeneity of the world, which is the dream of Western philosophy, science, and technology, is a nightmare. What confronts Bartleby, the scrivener in the Wall Street, is the same nightmarish world in which capitalist system attempts to master every heterogeneous element by incorporating, assimilating, or digesting all differences. Bartleby’s resistance to the system exposes a radical otherness that can never by domesticated or redeemed by the system. In other word, he is the irreducible waste product of various systematic operations or the excrement of the system that constitutes its blind spot. Imprisoned by the surrounding walls in the Wall Street and under the constant surveillance of the narrator’s eye, the copyists work diligently, complying with the economic rationality (of which the narrator is the agent) that must calculate the penalty and the reward and prescribe the appropriate techniques. Their bodies are then directly involved in the political field, as power relations have an immediate hold upon them, mark them, train them, and force them to carry out tasks and emit signs. However, the perverse Bartleby refuses to work. His existence constitutes an affront to the dominant metapsychology of Western civilization (at least, since the eighteenth century) and the assumption that we understand and control all men by self-interest. Marxism as well as “classical” politico-economic theory, utilitarian ethics as well as applied Christian morality, largely depend on the appeals to an organizable form of selfishness. But the man-from-the-underground a a Bartleby militantly denies all such appeals, and with absurd arrogance and the wisdom of failure refuses the motivations and resists the ethics of self-interest. The outrageousness of the act puts a grim cast of repression on all of the ostensibly rational orders. The psychological and ethical tactics lose their benevolent appearance and reveal a tyrannical warping of the human and a destruction of freedom, as those lonely creatures like Barley who insist on the primacy of preference and will end their subterranean lives in perversity and self-destruction. A sardonic pathos qualifies their exalted claims to individuality and unconditioned freedom.