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.
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