Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman
$120.00 (C)
- Author: Michael Jonik, University of Sussex
- Date Published: March 2018
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108420921
$
120.00
(C)
Hardback
Other available formats:
eBook
Looking for an examination copy?
This title is not currently available for examination. However, if you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact [email protected] providing details of the course you are teaching.
-
Studies of the writing of Herman Melville are often divided among those that address his political, historical, or biographical dimensions and those that offer creative theoretical readings of his texts. In Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman, Michael Jonik offers a series of nuanced and ambitious philosophical readings of Melville that unite these varied approaches. Through a careful reconstruction of Melville's interaction with philosophy, Jonik argues that Melville develops a notion of the 'inhuman' after Spinoza's radically non-anthropocentric and relational thought. Melville's own political philosophy, in turn, actively disassembles differences between humans and nonhumans, and the animate and inanimate. Jonik has us rethink not only how we read Melville, but also how we understand our deeply inhuman condition.
Read more- Contributes key discoveries regarding Melville's relation to philosophy, especially the importance and influence of Spinoza
- Offers nuanced and ambitious philosophical reading of Melville's politics, bringing new insight into the structure of political community
- Proposes new terms by which Melville can contribute to the theoretical discourses on the nonhuman, appealing to those interested in new materialism, posthumanism, animal studies, ecocriticism, object theory, or 'impersonal' approaches to American literature
Reviews & endorsements
'Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman brilliantly captures many of these valuable strains in Melville’s work, and it is most useful - and most pleasurable to think with - when it does so.' Adam Fales, The British Society for Literature and Science (bsls.ac.uk)
See more reviews'It is one of the most exciting, original, ambitious books on Melville in recent years, and it deserves a wide audience among readers of Leviathan, especially those with theoretical and philosophical interests.' Meredith Farmer, Leviathan
Customer reviews
Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review
Review was not posted due to profanity
×Product details
- Date Published: March 2018
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108420921
- length: 276 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 158 x 17 mm
- weight: 0.53kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction: Melville's inhumanities
1. 'The constituents of a chaos': character, materiality and ethopolitics in Moby-Dick
2. A geology of murmurs: Pierre's inhuman transformations
3. Outlandish beings, outlandish politics: 'The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles'
4. Misanthropology: commonality and its discontents in The Confidence-Man
5. 'Where wild rocks are set': character and the space of Clarel
6. Form, relation, and dissolution in Melville's later poetry
Coda: impulsive Billy Budd.
Sorry, this resource is locked
Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email [email protected]
Register Sign in» Proceed
You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.
Continue ×Are you sure you want to delete your account?
This cannot be undone.
Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.
If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.
×