Melville’s Obsessional Form
Disjunction and Refusal in “Benito Cereno”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12997256 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Scully (0000-0002-0490-2250, Fordham University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Publisher | European Association for American Studies (PUBLISHER • FR) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejas.20794 |
| OpenAlex | W4386787428 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
“Benito Cereno” offers an exemplary text to consider obsession in relation to narrative form. Melville’s tale operates on at least two levels: the first part, a third-person narration that exhausts itself when “Melville’s ultimate dupe” (Ngai 61), Captain Delano, finally realizes there has been a slave revolt on Cereno’s ship, and the second part, transcripts from legal depositions in the court case that makes a sovereign judgment on Babo and the events of the preceding narrative. Yet this judgment does little to resolve the narrative’s tensions. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, I argue for obsession as the governing formal principle of Melville’s narrative. The necessary and yet impossible coincidence of multiple levels of narration that characterizes obsession offers a compelling way to reread Melville’s representation and critique of the anti-Black fantasies that organize the society displayed in the story. The perpetual turning motion constitutive of obsessional form thus helps redescribe the competing narrative styles of “Benito Cereno,” as well as the aesthetic and political implications of Babo’s resistance to the anti-Black structures of Delano and Cereno’s world. Reading “Benito Cereno” in terms of obsessional form reveals its profound critique of anti-Blackness and the anti-Black fantasies sustaining it
Art · Literature · Narrative · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Relation (database · Representation (politics · Resistance (ecology · American and British Literature Analysis · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
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Anatomy of an Interpretive Controversy
Ontological Terror
"Echoes of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution in Melville's "Benito Cereno
Captain Babo's Cabin
Melville's Subversive Political Philosophy
"A "Hive of Subtlety
The Neurotic's Individual Myth
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |