Ahab unbound : Melville and the materialist turn

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 Arsic, 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 Martinez Benedi, 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.

• 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 Arsic 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 Martinez Benedi 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