This Sailor is Unhoused: Herman Melville’s Radical Politics of Unbelonging in White-Jacket

Abstract

[eng] In this dissertation I aim to rescue Herman Melville’s White-Jacket from academic oblivion, arguing that it demands to be read as a synecdoche for his literary project, one that becomes a constitutive part to understand the whole. In bringing White-Jacket to the present, I demonstrate that this neglected novel centrally deals with the problematic notion of belonging, a running theme in Melville’s oeuvre that deserves to be included in current scholarship, discussed and problematized. I draw attention to Melville’s narrator and the ways in which he dismantles the equation between identity and private property as he grows increasingly disappointed with essentialist forms of identification based on exclusion and structured around an asphyxiating understanding of the domestic space. I divide my argument in three parts to describe the process of deconstruction of belonging: subjectivity, domesticity, and the nation. With this three-themed structure, therefore, I also aim to outline three different valences of the domestic. In part one, I explore one of the nineteenth-century senses of the domestic in the U.S., understood as home-made clothing. I analyze the troubled and troubling relationship between the narrator and his white jacket, arguing that he engages in an exercise of projective identification in which he aims to read his own garment as a surrogate self and understand a still-intuited queer difference. In this novel, queerness does not manifest as sex between men, but as the deviation of queer energies from nonstraight sexual practices to the interpretation of the white jacket. In part two, I deal with the most common sense of the domestic as a living space belonging to the household. Instead of focusing on the traditional house, I analyze different domestic dynamics related to intimacy and privacy on board a nineteenth-century man-of-war. In doing so, I open up what I argue may be an important research line in Melville studies: to read the ship not only as a workspace but also as a domestic space. For Melville, to think about ships is also to reflect on how to make workspaces more livable and healthier. In White-Jacket, I argue that the excessive proximity to sailors does not enable intimacy, but prevents it, since the ship lacks the space in-between necessary for the political (Arendt). In part three, I move from the domestic ship to the microcosmic representation of the nation-state in White-Jacket, referring to the domestic as a characteristic internal to one’s country: home as homeland. I contend that Melville’s narrator examines relevant notions of nation, race, and gender as he questions the imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny and dismantles it as domestic ideology based on the ambition for private property and the colonial desire for territorial expansion. In doing so, I discuss important issues related to pacifism, unbelonging, and empathy so as to demonstrate that White-Jacket proposes an anti-imperialist, anti-hierarchical, and anti-essentialist project of living in the world in democratic and inclusive cohabitation with others regardless of monolithic identities. With this dissertation I conclude that Melville’s White-Jacket merits to be acknowledged not only as an important work in itself, but also as precursor of Moby-Dick, and therefore, it has the potential to provide critics with new angles and perspectives to reinterpret a work which is widely considered today as the Great American Novel. Drawing on debates around gender and queer studies, thing theory, queer phenomenology, domestic studies, affect theory, maritime epistemology, and oceanic studies, I argue that this novel, even though it still remains largely unknown, manifests not only a core theme in Melville, but also a key concern in world literatures: the emancipatory call for a coalition among those who do not belong.

[cat] Aquesta tesi rescata White-Jacket de Herman Melville de l'oblit acadèmic, argumentant que tracta centralment la noció problemàtica de pertinença, un tema recurrent en l'obra de Melville en la beca actual. La tesi para atenció al narrador de Melville i les maneres en què desmunta l'equació entre identitat i propietat privada a mesura que el deceben les formes essencialistes d'identificació basades en l'exclusió i estructurades al voltant d'una comprensió asfixiant de l'espai domèstic. Estructuro el meu argument en tres parts per descriure tres valències diferents del domèstic: la subjectivitat, la domesticitat i la nació. A la primera, exploro un dels sentits domèstics del segle XIX dels Estats Units, entès com a roba feta a casa. Analitzo la relació preocupant i problemàtica entre el narrador i la seva jaqueta blanca, argumentant que es tracta d’un exercici d'identificació projectiva en què pretén llegir la seva peça com un jo substitutiu i comprendre una diferència queer només intuïda. A la segona part, m’ocupo del sentit més literal de la llar: l’espai habitable. Defenso que el vaixell no només és un espai de treball sinó també domèstic, fet que ens permet repensar com els espais laborals poden esdevenir més habitables i saludables. A la tercera part, tracto el domèstic com una característica interna de l'estat-nació. Afirmo que el narrador de Melville examina les nocions rellevants de nació, raça i gènere mentre qüestiona la ideologia imperialista del Destí Manifest, desmantellant-la com a ideologia domèstica basada en l’ambició burgesa de propietat privada i el desig colonial d'expansió territorial. Concloc que White-Jacket de Melville mereix ser reconeguda no només com una obra important en si mateixa, sinó també com a precursora de Moby-Dick, àmpliament considerada avui com la Gran Novel·la Americana. A partir dels debats actuals al voltant dels estudis de gènere i queer, la thing theory, la fenomenologia queer, els estudis domèstics, la teoria de l'afecte, l'epistemologia marítima i els estudis oceànics, White-Jacket manifesta una preocupació clau en les literatures mundials: la crida emancipadora a una coalició entre aquells que no pertanyen.