# name
This Sailor is Unhoused: Herman Melville’s Radical Politics of Unbelonging in White-Jacket

# metadata.dc.contributor.other[].value
Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat de Filologia

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
[eng] In this dissertation I aim to rescue Herman Melville’s White-Jacket from academic
oblivion, arguing that it demands to be read as a synecdoche for his literary project, one
that becomes a constitutive part to understand the whole. In bringing White-Jacket to the
present, I demonstrate that this neglected novel centrally deals with the problematic
notion of belonging, a running theme in Melville’s oeuvre that deserves to be included in
current scholarship, discussed and problematized. I draw attention to Melville’s narrator
and the ways in which he dismantles the equation between identity and private property
as he grows increasingly disappointed with essentialist forms of identification based on
exclusion and structured around an asphyxiating understanding of the domestic space. I
divide my argument in three parts to describe the process of deconstruction of belonging:
subjectivity, domesticity, and the nation. With this three-themed structure, therefore, I also
aim to outline three different valences of the domestic.
In part one, I explore one of the nineteenth-century senses of the domestic in the U.S.,
understood as home-made clothing. I analyze the troubled and troubling relationship
between the narrator and his white jacket, arguing that he engages in an exercise of
projective identification in which he aims to read his own garment as a surrogate self and
understand a still-intuited queer difference. In this novel, queerness does not manifest as
sex between men, but as the deviation of queer energies from nonstraight sexual practices
to the interpretation of the white jacket.
In part two, I deal with the most common sense of the domestic as a living space belonging
to the household. Instead of focusing on the traditional house, I analyze different domestic
dynamics related to intimacy and privacy on board a nineteenth-century man-of-war. In
doing so, I open up what I argue may be an important research line in Melville studies: to
read the ship not only as a workspace but also as a domestic space. For Melville, to think
about ships is also to reflect on how to make workspaces more livable and healthier. In
White-Jacket, I argue that the excessive proximity to sailors does not enable intimacy, but
prevents it, since the ship lacks the space in-between necessary for the political (Arendt).
In part three, I move from the domestic ship to the microcosmic representation of the
nation-state in White-Jacket, referring to the domestic as a characteristic internal to one’s
country: home as homeland. I contend that Melville’s narrator examines relevant notions
of nation, race, and gender as he questions the imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny
and dismantles it as domestic ideology based on the ambition for private property and the
colonial desire for territorial expansion. In doing so, I discuss important issues related to
pacifism, unbelonging, and empathy so as to demonstrate that White-Jacket proposes an
anti-imperialist, anti-hierarchical, and anti-essentialist project of living in the world in
democratic and inclusive cohabitation with others regardless of monolithic identities.
With this dissertation I conclude that Melville’s White-Jacket merits to be acknowledged
not only as an important work in itself, but also as precursor of Moby-Dick, and therefore,
it has the potential to provide critics with new angles and perspectives to reinterpret a
work which is widely considered today as the Great American Novel. Drawing on debates
around gender and queer studies, thing theory, queer phenomenology, domestic studies,
affect theory, maritime epistemology, and oceanic studies, I argue that this novel, even
though it still remains largely unknown, manifests not only a core theme in Melville, but
also a key concern in world literatures: the emancipatory call for a coalition among those
who do not belong.

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
[cat] Aquesta tesi rescata White-Jacket de Herman Melville de l'oblit acadèmic, argumentant
que tracta centralment la noció problemàtica de pertinença, un tema recurrent en l'obra de
Melville en la beca actual. La tesi para atenció al narrador de Melville i les maneres en
què desmunta l'equació entre identitat i propietat privada a mesura que el deceben les
formes essencialistes d'identificació basades en l'exclusió i estructurades al voltant d'una
comprensió asfixiant de l'espai domèstic. Estructuro el meu argument en tres parts per
descriure tres valències diferents del domèstic: la subjectivitat, la domesticitat i la nació.
A la primera, exploro un dels sentits domèstics del segle XIX dels Estats Units, entès com
a roba feta a casa. Analitzo la relació preocupant i problemàtica entre el narrador i la seva
jaqueta blanca, argumentant que es tracta d’un exercici d'identificació projectiva en què
pretén llegir la seva peça com un jo substitutiu i comprendre una diferència queer només
intuïda. A la segona part, m’ocupo del sentit més literal de la llar: l’espai habitable.
Defenso que el vaixell no només és un espai de treball sinó també domèstic, fet que ens
permet repensar com els espais laborals poden esdevenir més habitables i saludables. A
la tercera part, tracto el domèstic com una característica interna de l'estat-nació. Afirmo
que el narrador de Melville examina les nocions rellevants de nació, raça i gènere mentre
qüestiona la ideologia imperialista del Destí Manifest, desmantellant-la com a ideologia
domèstica basada en l’ambició burgesa de propietat privada i el desig colonial d'expansió
territorial. Concloc que White-Jacket de Melville mereix ser reconeguda no només com
una obra important en si mateixa, sinó també com a precursora de Moby-Dick,
àmpliament considerada avui com la Gran Novel·la Americana. A partir dels debats
actuals al voltant dels estudis de gènere i queer, la thing theory, la fenomenologia queer,
els estudis domèstics, la teoria de l'afecte, l'epistemologia marítima i els estudis oceànics,
White-Jacket manifesta una preocupació clau en les literatures mundials: la crida
emancipadora a una coalició entre aquells que no pertanyen.

# metadata.dc.rights[].value
cc by-nc-nd (c) Corujo Hernández, Arturo, 2024

# metadata.dc.title[].value
This Sailor is Unhoused: Herman Melville’s Radical Politics of Unbelonging in White-Jacket