Literature, disaster, and the enigma of power : a reading of 'Moby-Dick' / Eyal Peretz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peretz, Eyal, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Moby Dick.

Melville, Herman.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Political and social views.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.

Sea stories, American--History and criticism.

Sea stories, American.

Power (Social sciences) in literature.

Whaling in literature.

Whales in literature.

Political and social views.

Physical Description:

176 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

This powerful new reading of Moby-Dick brings into play some of the most consequential theoretical developments of the last three decades in philosophy, cultural studies, and literary criticism. It takes account of four trends in innovative critical thought: recent theories of power, as articulated by Foucault, Deleuze, Butler, and Agamben; theories of trauma and testimony developed by Felman and Caruth; the new thinking of ethics, articulated by Levinas and Derrida; and the new thinking of history developed by New Historicism. All four, the author argues, participate in a groundbreaking new elaboration of the concept of disaster. Moby-Dick's privilege, the author claims, anticipates this new thinking of the disaster and shows that it demands simultaneously a new thinking of the literary. Read from this perspective, Melville's novel can both be illuminated by these recent theoretical developments and, in turn, illuminate them, adding new and complex dimensions to their findings.

Contents:

From Judgment to Power 3

America

A Witnessing of Europe 19

1 The Enigma of Power 27

2 Call Me Ishmael 35

Leviathanalysis 46

3 Ahab's Whale

A Bleeding Wound 48

Language as Hunt; Language as Wail 54

4 Ishmael's Whale

Whiteness and the Witness, or the Collapse of the Author 67

The Power of Whiteness 68

Two Understandings of the Fabulous 86

Moby-Dick and Literary History 90

Ishmael: Whale-Author(ity) 98.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [165]-171) and index.

ISBN:

0804746141

OCLC:

50447786