Overview

Why Captain Ahab is worthy of our fear-and our compassion Herman Melville's Captain Ahab is perennially seen as the paradigm of a controlling, tyrannical agent. Ahab Unbound leaves his position as a Cold War icon behind, recasting him as a contingent figure, transformed by his environment-by chemistry, electromagnetism, entomology, meteorology, diet, illness, pain, trauma, and neurons firing-in ways that unexpectedly force us to see him as worthy of our empathy and our compassion. In sixteen essays by leading scholars, Ahab Unbound advances an urgent inquiry into Melville's emergence as a center of gravity for materialist work, reframing his infamous whaling captain in terms of pressing conversations in animal studies, critical race and ethnic studies, disability studies, environmental humanities, medical humanities, political theory, and posthumanism. By taking Ahab as a focal point, we gather and give shape to the multitude of ways that materialism produces criticism in our current moment. Collectively, these readings challenge our thinking about the boundaries of both persons and nations, along with the racist and environmental violence caused by categories like the person and the human. Ahab Unbound makes a compelling case for both the vitality of materialist inquiry and the continued resonance of Melville's work. Contributors: Branka Arsi, Columbia U; Christopher Castiglia, Pennsylvania State U; Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt U; Christian P. Haines, Pennsylvania State U; Bonnie Honig, Brown U; Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt U; Pilar Martnez Bened, U of L'Aquila, Italy; Steve Mentz, St. John's College; John Modern, Franklin and Marshall College; Mark D. Noble, Georgia State U; Samuel Otter, U of California, Berkeley; Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College; Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College; Russell Sbriglia, Seton Hall U; Michael D. Snediker, U of Houston; Matthew A. Taylor, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ivy Wilson, Northwestern U.

Full Product Details

Author:   Meredith Farmer ,  Jonathan D. S. Schroeder
Publisher:   University of Minnesota Press
Imprint:   University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 5.10cm , Length: 22.90cm
ISBN:  

9781517907556

ISBN 10:   1517907551
Pages:   464
Publication Date:   19 April 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Rethinking Ahab: Melville and the Materialist Turn Meredith Farmer Part I. Ontologies 1. Sailing without Ahab Steve Mentz 2. Ambiental Cogito: Ahab with Whales Branka Arsić 3. Ahab after Agency  Mark D. Noble 4. Thinking with a Wrinkled Brow; or, Herman Melville, Catherine Malabou, and the Brains of New Materialism Christian P. Haines  Part II. Relations 5. Phantom Empathy: Ahab and Mirror-Touch Synesthesia Pilar Martínez Benedí and Ralph James Savarese 6. Phenomenology beyond the Phantom Limb: Melvillean Figuration and Chronic Pain Michael D. Snediker 7.‘The King is a Thing’; or, Ahab as Subject of the Unconscious: A Lacanian Materialist Reading Russell Sbriglia 8. Approaching Ahab Blind Christopher Castiglia Part III. Politics 9. ‘this post-mortemizing of the whale’: The Vapors of Materialism, New and Old Bonnie Honig 10.Ahab’s Electromagnetic Constitution Donald E. Pease 11. The Whiteness of the Will: Ahab and the Matter of Monomania Jonathan D. S. Schroeder 12. Diet on the Pequod and the Wreck of Reason Jonathan Lamb Part IV. New Melvilles 13. Ahab’s After-Life: The Tortoises of ‘The Encantadas’ Matthew A. Taylor  14. Israel Potter; or, the Excrescence Colin Dayan 15.Melville, Materiality, and the Social Hieroglyphics of Leisure and Labor Ivy Wilson 16. Melville’s Basement Tapes John Modern Afterword: Melville Among the Materialists Samuel Otter Acknowledgments Contributors Index

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Author Information

Meredith Farmer is assistant teaching professor in English and the Environmental Program at Wake Forest University. She is author of the forthcoming book Melville's Leaks: Science, Materialism, and the Reconstitution of Persons. Jonathan D. S. Schroeder is visiting assistant professor of American studies at Brandeis University.

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