Deconstructing Narrative, Deconstructing the death penalty. The case of Billy Budd, Sailor. Issue 11 (2nd November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Anker, Richard
• Is Part Of: Textual practice. Volume 35:Issue 11(2021)
• Page Start: 1869
• Page End: 1882
• Publication Date: 2021-11-02
• Subjects: Melville -- Derrida -- death penalty -- deconstruction -- narrative -- speech; Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism, Textual -- Periodicals; Semiotics -- Periodicals; 801.95
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2021.1968186
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-236X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article proposes a deconstructive reading of Billy Budd, Sailor partly by situating the narrative in the context of Derrida's late seminar on the death penalty. Arguing that the core of Melville's narrative harbours the idealistic fantasy of redeeming the finitude of speech, a finitude which is thematically dramatised in the Handsome Sailor's stutter, it demonstrates how this fantasy reaches at once its most radical achievement in the execution of the death penalty and its deconstructive limit, thus revealing the fundamental inefficacity of capital punishment.