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From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”

Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno” (1855/56) is one of the best-studied texts both within Melville’s oeuvre and nineteenth-century American literature in general. In recent decades, its puzzling structure and fragmented narrative perspective as well as its symbolism and themes have been subje...

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Autor principal: Ganser, Alexandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Routledge 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29696056
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1384612
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author Ganser, Alexandra
author_facet Ganser, Alexandra
author_sort Ganser, Alexandra
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description Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno” (1855/56) is one of the best-studied texts both within Melville’s oeuvre and nineteenth-century American literature in general. In recent decades, its puzzling structure and fragmented narrative perspective as well as its symbolism and themes have been subject to critical scrutiny mostly in the context of inquiries into the text’s racial politics regarding the institution of slavery. More specifically, the canonical tale about a slave uprising on the ship San Dominick, its detection by a Massachusetts-born captain and its consequences, has been discussed in the context of Paul Gilroy’s black Atlantic paradigm. Few readings of the tale consider the significance of the Pacific setting of a story grounded in the transatlantic slave trade but happening far away from the center of American slavery. Taking a fresh look at Melville’s tale, this essay focuses on its translation of (black) Atlantic subject matters and epistemologies onto the Pacific. Not only do I read the tale as both an Atlantic and a Pacific text, demonstrating that the institution of slavery and its specters know no geographical borders in Melville’s imagination; I also argue that piracy is an important trope in this context. Anticipating the shift of piracy cases and slavery to the Pacific towards the end of the nineteenth century, it both recalls a black Atlantic and predicts a bleak Pacific of violent imperial scenarios that would come to characterize US–Pacific relations.
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spelling pubmed-58943592018-04-23 From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno” Ganser, Alexandra Atl Stud (Abingdon) Articles Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno” (1855/56) is one of the best-studied texts both within Melville’s oeuvre and nineteenth-century American literature in general. In recent decades, its puzzling structure and fragmented narrative perspective as well as its symbolism and themes have been subject to critical scrutiny mostly in the context of inquiries into the text’s racial politics regarding the institution of slavery. More specifically, the canonical tale about a slave uprising on the ship San Dominick, its detection by a Massachusetts-born captain and its consequences, has been discussed in the context of Paul Gilroy’s black Atlantic paradigm. Few readings of the tale consider the significance of the Pacific setting of a story grounded in the transatlantic slave trade but happening far away from the center of American slavery. Taking a fresh look at Melville’s tale, this essay focuses on its translation of (black) Atlantic subject matters and epistemologies onto the Pacific. Not only do I read the tale as both an Atlantic and a Pacific text, demonstrating that the institution of slavery and its specters know no geographical borders in Melville’s imagination; I also argue that piracy is an important trope in this context. Anticipating the shift of piracy cases and slavery to the Pacific towards the end of the nineteenth century, it both recalls a black Atlantic and predicts a bleak Pacific of violent imperial scenarios that would come to characterize US–Pacific relations. Routledge 2018-03-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5894359/ /pubmed/29696056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1384612 Text en © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Articles
Ganser, Alexandra
From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title_full From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title_fullStr From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title_full_unstemmed From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title_short From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading “Benito Cereno”
title_sort from the black atlantic to the bleak pacific: re-reading “benito cereno”
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29696056
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1384612
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