Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Moby-Dick and the American Canon
Posthumanist Theory and Canon Formation
A Genealogical History of the Reception of Moby-Dick, 1850-1945
The New Americanist "Field-Imaginary" and the Vietnam War
The New Americanist and Moby-Dick
The Limits of the New Americanist Discourse
2. Metaphysics and Spatial Form: Melville's Critique of Speculative Philosophy and Fiction
Tragic Vision and Metaphysics
Tragic Vision and Moby-Dick
Melville's Errant Measure: The Testimony of the Fiction Following Moby-Dick
The Question of Ishmael's Name
Ishmael's Reading of Father Mapple's Reading of the Jonah Text
The Centered Circle, the Imperial Gaze, and Abasement
The American Adam and the Naming of the White Whale
Ishmael and the Unnaming of Moby Dick
Ishmael, Theory, and Practice
The Self as Orphan
Ishmael and Negative Capability
Representation and Errancy: The Art of Narration
Cetology and Discipline
Political Economy in Moby-Dick: Toward a Counterhegemony
Repetition and the Indissoluble Continuum of Being: Melville's Polis
Moby-Dick as Diabolic Book
The Question of Ishmael's Name: A Repetition
The Struggle to Appropriate Moby-Dick: Indeterminancy and Positionality
The "Vietnam Syndrome"
Fredric Jameson and Frank Lentricchia: Reading Michael Herr's Dispatches
The Postmodernity of the Vietnam War
Moby-Dick and the Vietnam War
Notes
Bibliography
Index