Freeburg Christopher - Melville and the idea of blackness: race and imperialism in nineteenth-century America

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Melville and the Idea of Blackness

By examining the unique problems that blackness signifies in Moby-Dick, Pierre , Benito Cereno, and The Encantadas, Christopher Freeburg analyzes how Herman Melville grapples with the social realities of racial difference in nineteenth-century America. Where Melvilles critics typically read blackness as a metaphor for the haunting power of slavery or an allegory of moral evil, Freeburg asserts that blackness functions as the site where Melville correlates the sociopolitical challenges of transatlantic slavery and U.S. colonial expansion with philosophical concerns about mastery. By focusing on Melvilles iconic interracial encounters, Freeburg reveals the important role blackness plays in Melvilles portrayal of characters arduous attempts to seize their own destinies, amass scientific knowledge, and perfect themselves. A valuable resource for scholars and graduate students in American literature, this text will also appeal to those working in American, African American, and postcolonial studies.

Christopher Freeburg is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his masters degree from Stanford. His work has appeared in journals such as American Literature and Modern Fiction Studies .

Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture

Editor

Ross Posnock

Columbia University

Founding Editor

Albert Gelpi

Stanford University

Advisory Board

Alfred Bendixen

Texas A&M University

Sacvan Bercovitch

Harvard University

Ronald Bush

St. Johns College, University of Oxford

Wai Chee Dimock

Yale University

Albert Gelpi

Stanford University

Gordon Hutner

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Walter Benn Michaels

University of Illinois, Chicago

Kenneth Warren

University of Chicago

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Melville and the Idea of Blackness
Race and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century America

Christopher Freeburg

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press

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www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107022065

Christopher Freeburg 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Freeburg, Christopher.

Melville and the idea of blackness : race and imperialism in nineteenth-century

America / Christopher Freeburg.

p. cm. (Cambridge studies in American literature and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-02206-5 (hardback)

1. Melville, Herman, 18191891 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Race relations

in literature. 3. Literature and society United States History 19th century.

4. Blacks Race identity United States History 19th century. I. Title.

PS2388.R3F74 2012

813.3dc23

2012009116

ISBN 978-1-107-02206-5 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To Joseph Brown S.J.

and Trish Loughran

Preface Darkening the Past

Voyage through death

to life upon these shores.

Robert Hayden, Middle Passage

This book concerns Melvilles idea of blackness and racial conflict in the Americas. Throughout Melville and the Idea of Blackness , I discuss how Melvilles blackness signals the agonizing and volatile challenges of fully mastering ones self or other people. Melville captures this difficult and often traumatizing struggle through fictional episodes drawn from the history of slavery and colonialism. While the former ideas characterize this books specific focus on racial contests and Melvilles blackness, this preface forecasts something broader in scope. Here, I use the term blackness to ask fundamental questions about the way critics think about history and what they mean when they say they are thinking historically. Melvilles blackness, in my view, helps critics to query further what it is to be historical or to use history as an instrument for revisiting various narratives of sociopolitical progress, which defines much of literary and cultural inquiry in Americanist fields.

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