Why bother doing a genealogy of refusal from Fiction and Science Fiction and popular culture?  If we want to confront the options for workplace refusal it helps if we acquaint ourselves with some common stories and the worlds they've explored, exploited, and created.  We can begin our own exercise in professional foresight by examining dystopian, utopian, satiric and humorous workplace scenarios.


Just as Bartleby lives on (and has been taken up by filmmakers, artists, literary theorists, and even RPGs), libraries and librarians don't exist apart from the culture we curate. We exist in that self-same idiosyncratic, imperfect, self-reflective culture of books, film, comics, music, history and theory. If we're going to look at workplace refusal through art, music, dance, film, sit-coms, and science fiction, from Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener to Doctorow's Walkaway we can construct a sort of kinship diagram of workplace refusal. In it we can also counterpose and trace the library profession’s inheritance of vocational awe.

This kinship diagram is a lighthearted visualization inspired by the CJAL Special Issue: Refusing Crisis Narratives . We hope it spurs discussion, maybe laughter, and another way of positioning the ways librarians can say and hear "NO" as a complete sentence. We know this genealogy is, by virtue of its motivation, bound to be: arbitrary, incomplete, inaccurate, and always a work in progress, open to argument, revision, and criticism. We are okay with that.

This genealogy is launching point for understanding the librarian's role in crisis narratives in the workplace. It lets us connect the librarian's role not just to the characteristics accredited through the award of an MLS or other degree or credential, but also to other memorable characters in popular culture, and to labor and feminist work. It helps if we have a common narrative history to refer to that exists "outside" the profession.

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