Melville's Democracy by Jennifer Greiman;

Author:Jennifer Greiman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

But such a generalization too quickly elides a number of complications in this narrative of democracy and its defeat on board the Pequod. For one thing, while it would seem that Starbuck’s “democratic dignity” cannot withstand the force of Ahab’s “irresistible dictatorship” (147), it is not with the force of “dictatorship” alone that Ahab redirects the mission of the ship, and for another, Ahab’s mission cannot be described simply in terms of a defeat or a usurpation of the Pequod’s “democratic” crew. Although Ishmael suggests that Ahab embodies a power that would require no sanction from his crew, Ahab’s announcement produces just that, as everyone but Starbuck voices assent: “The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? . . . Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!” (164). If, as Dimock and others argue, this moment marks the defeat of democracy in the text, it is not simply the sovereign force of a dictator or despot that defeats it, but neither is it exactly “democracy” that defeats “democratic dignity.” Instead, a particular mutation within “democracy” is at work—just as a mutation within whaling underlies Ahab’s determination of their mission. Instead of killing whales in general, the crew will now hunt one whale in particular, and as Starbuck realizes with a great deal of trepidation, this changes everything about both whaling and the whalers themselves.

Rather than a totalitarian power grab, Ahab’s desire for vengeance against a “dumb brute” is a powerfully equalizing gesture, one that solicits assent from the crew and pits human against whale on the same ontological field: “There is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations” (164).39 His singular decision on the exceptional purpose of the Pequod’s voyage may resemble the muscular view of sovereign power (the return to “the ipseity of the one”), but Ahab acts from a position of immanence, not transcendence. If the crew is “one and all with Ahab in this matter of the whale” this is because, as Ahab himself describes it, he acts through them not over them: “My one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve” (167). Melville refuses us the comforts of a “dictatorship” usurping a “democracy” in these pages because, from “Knights and Squires” to “The Quarter-Deck” and beyond, sovereignty and democracy, figured as centralization and equality, swirl around each other with increasing velocity and intensity. Indeed, it is chiefly through circular figures that Melville underscores the intimate connection between all of these terms as circles, spirals, and rotations abound in these chapters. If “the centre and circumference of all democracy” designates a circle where equality is sovereign and sovereignty equal, it also marks out the space of the “kingly commons” from which Ishmael singles out “a poor old whale-hunter” and artfully endows him with all the “majestical trappings and housings” of Emperors and Kings (148). Such circles first move centrifugally, raying out to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.