Jonik, Michael (2018) Herman Melville and the politics of the inhuman. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9781108420921

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Abstract

Studies of the writing of Herman Melville are often divided among those that address his political, historical, or biographical dimensions and those that offer creative theoretical readings of his texts. In Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman, Michael Jonik offers a series of nuanced and ambitious philosophical readings of Melville that unite these varied approaches. Through a careful reconstruction of Melville's interaction with philosophy, Jonik argues that Melville develops a notion of the 'inhuman' after Spinoza's radically non-anthropocentric and relational thought. Melville's own political philosophy, in turn, actively disassembles differences between humans and nonhumans, and the animate and inanimate. Jonik has us rethink not only how we read Melville, but also how we understand our deeply inhuman condition.

Item Type:	Book
Keywords:	Area Studies, American Studies, American Literature, Literature, Literary Theory
Schools and Departments:	School of English > English
Research Centres and Groups:	Sussex Centre for American Studies
Related URLs:	https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355667
Depositing User:	Michael Jonik
Date Deposited:	27 Mar 2018 10:54
Last Modified:	01 Sep 2018 01:00
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/74673

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