Of squalls and mutinies: emergency politics and black democracy in Moby-Dick and 'The Heroic Slave'. Issue 11 (2nd November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Spengler, Nicholas
• Is Part Of: Textual practice. Volume 35:Issue 11(2021)
• Page Start: 1815
• Page End: 1834
• Publication Date: 2021-11-02
• Subjects: Herman Melville -- Frederick Douglass -- marine weather/climate -- democracy -- political ecology -- object-oriented ontology -- critical race studies; Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism, Textual -- Periodicals; Semiotics -- Periodicals; 801.95
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2021.1968183
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-236X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article takes an object-oriented approach to the analogies between weather events and political events in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) and Frederick Douglass's 'The Heroic Slave' (1853), arguing that marine weathers in these maritime fictions take the measure of the political without being reducible to it. I integrate political-ecological theories of emergency and 'emergence' with the analogic poetics of both object-oriented philosophy and critical race studies to show how stormy weather in these texts carries a special charge in articulating an emergent politics of Black democracy.