Authentic refusal rejects the terms of the question itself.

Evidence

For my part, I, too, will remain unimpressed until the social media technology we use is noncommercial. But while commercial social networks reign supreme, let’s remember that a real refusal, like Bartleby’s answer, refuses the terms of the question itself. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 332

For my part, I, too, will remain unimpressed until the social media technology we use is noncommercial. But while commercial social networks reign supreme, let’s remember that a real refusal, like Bartleby’s answer, refuses the terms of the question itself. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 332

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key move in defending Odell against withdrawal misreading: refusal is reframing the question, not opting out.
• BMF: Bartleby’s ‘I would prefer not to’ resonates with the ‘power to switch off’ theme, though no exact match in the reader’s library.
• SEED: Bartleby as the patron saint of refusing the attention economy’s terms could anchor an essay defining what non-withdrawal resistance actually looks like.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 332
• XREF: connects to: Refusal to take a stance on one’s identity is itself a stance. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1238; Middle-class refusal actually states a truth that cannot now be spoken — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 166