taylor-limbs of empire

8132019 Taylor-limbs of Empire

httpslidepdfcomreaderfulltaylor-limbs-of-empire 129

American Literature Volume 10486321048627 Number 1048625 March 1048626104862410486251048625DOI 10486251048624104862510486261048625104862910486241048624104862410486261048633104863210486271048625-1048626104862410486251048624-104862410486301048626 copy 1048626104862410486251048625 by Duke University Press

In June 1048625104863210486281048631 P T Barnumrsquos American Museumopened an exhibition featuring the captured prosthetic limb of Gen-

eral Antonio Loacutepez de Santa Anna notorious leader of the Mexicanarmy during the US-Mexican War The leg was brought to New Yorkfrom the battlefields of Mexico and displayed before a sensationalizedpublic who wrote sang about and went to see the generalrsquos woodenleg983089 Herman Melville fascinated by Barnum and his representationalpractices wrote a piece for Yankee Doodle on the ldquolife-sized exhibi-tion of the great Santa-Anna Bootrdquo983090 Les Harrison has recently arguedthe importance of Barnumrsquos cultural practices to Melvillersquos novels

finding parallels between the American Museum and that ldquothing oftrophiesrdquo the Pequod 983091 Like a museum Moby-Dick collects and givesstories to things strange and quotidian sampling and displaying USand oceanic material culture in much the same way that the novelrsquospreface ldquoExtractsrdquo samples the bibliographic history of whales Whatif however Moby-Dick did not simply incorporate the object episte-mologies of museums but also incorporated the objects themselves

What if the dismasted captain Ahab is perched atopmdashin a nearly lit-

eral fashionmdashthe captured cork of General Santa Anna Following Elaine Freedgood I am suggesting ldquoa literal approach tothe literary thingrdquo983092 yet Moby-Dick presents numerous challenges tothis interpretive stance From its title the novel folds the literal intothe literary prioritizing the latter but opening space for a hermeneuticdecision Moby-Dick or the Whale983093 With Ishmael readers oscillatebetween John Locke and Immanuel Kant between the material andthe metaphoric between literal and literary reading modes ( MD 104862710486291048631)

The stakes are not merely epistemological the loss of the literal is the

ChristopherTaylor

The Limbs of Empire Ahab Santa Annaand Moby-Dick



30 American Literature

context in which the Pequod rsquos tragedy unfolds Starbuckrsquos fecklessattempt to disenchant the whalemdasha ldquolsquodumb thingrsquordquo he claimsmdashlacksthe affective and symbolic power of Ahabrsquos figuring of that ldquolsquoinscru-

table thingrsquordquo ( MD 104862510486311048632) Although the position Starbuck takes is unvi-able the antinomy he establishes calls attention to the process and thepolitics by which things are deliteralized and figured If the material isalways already metaphoric if the literal is always becoming literarywhat are the politics of this process What are the effects and affectsof deliteralization Freedgood advocates examining the literary thing ldquoin terms of itsown properties and history and then refigur[ing it] alongside andathwart the novelrsquos manifest or dominant narrativerdquo983094 Yet to follow

the literal history of Santa Annarsquos prosthesis is to track the constantldquolossrdquo as Freedgood would say of its ldquospecific qualitiesrdquo and of its lit-eral referent983095 The prosthetic thing appears in the archive as alreadydetermined by the narrative demands of empire the figures of empirefill the gap left by the loss of the literal Through the representationalpractices of people like Barnum the generalrsquos leg far from indexinghis loss figured the triumphs of empire building It is this process ofimperial metaphorizationmdasha subtraction by addition where the literal

is lost by supplementing it with the prosthesis of figurative meaningmdashthat Moby-Dick engages983096 As ldquoThe Quarter-deckrdquo chapter suggeststhe surplus of the symbol is never simply an enchanted thing but acommunity that participates in and maintains the thingrsquos figurativepower Moby-Dick I argue inscribes the process of deliteralizationand figuration to which Santa Annarsquos prosthesis was subject attendingto the power of things to produce and subordinate what he will call onthe outbreak of the war the ldquodemocratic rabblerdquo983097 Melvillersquos attention

to the figurative work by which this material thing socially matterednecessitates rethinking the relationship between the text and the his-tory with which it engages Michael Paul Rogin proposes that Moby-

Dick is irreducible to political-historical allegory insofar as Ahab him-self renders allegorization an immanent aspect of the novel983089983088 Otherscholars refusing the grandeur of the allegorical have uneartheddizzying and significant correspondences between the text and its con-text Given the geographic and referential promiscuity of Moby-Dickits context can extend endlessly as evidenced by the important work ofrecent transnationally oriented scholarship that centers the Pequod rsquosnarrative in Japan the Pacific Latin America South Asia and so on983089983089



Ahab Santa Anna and Moby-Dick 31

Although my reading draws on these approaches it also suggests thatMelvillersquos engagement with the social history of Santa Annarsquos prosthe-sis calls for a displacement of focus The link between Moby-Dick and

imperialism in Mexico is more intimate than Ishmaelrsquos transfigurationof the ocean into a frontier prairie or his rhetorical dismissal of theUnited Statesrsquo desire to ldquoadd Mexico to Texasrdquo ( MD 10486311048624) The noveldoes not just reflect encode correspond to or offer a literary interpre-tation of an ontologically prior historical narrative but exposes the rhe-torical figures that governed the symbolic economies through whichthe social text of the period known as ldquothe American 1048625104863210486281048632rdquo was pro-duced and cognized In his engagement with Santa Annarsquos prosthesisMelville plays the part of a Russian formalist revealing the rhetorical

devices through which the limb gained its social meaning while indi-cating that the particular figures Barnumrsquos exhibit deployed offer ahermeneutic for reading the social more broadly Moby-Dick reads thefigurative career of Santa Annarsquos prosthesis to reconstruct the politicsand political effects of the figures through which the social world ofthe American 1048625104863210486281048632 was constituted thought and reshaped The process of industrialization the rise of wage relations thedeclining viability of independent artisan labor and the concomitant

formation of an urban working class structured the New York socialworld that Barnum and Melville inhabited983089983090 Resisting these changesmembers of both the radical and popular sections of the working classdeveloped racial and nationalist cultural forms through which theycritiqued their dependence on industrial capitalism983089983091 Intertwinedwith nationalist and racial rhetoric figures of bodily disability and lossunderwrote working-class critiques of the heteronomy of capitalismand of wage slavery While Jacksonian workers asserted a regenera-

tive white national identity against the disabling effects of capitalismUS elites deployed figures of bodily and fiscal injury to justify expan-sion into Mexico Generating popular support for the war this rheto-ric of national loss captured and redirected the figures by which theworking class critiqued capitalism the ldquoprosthetics of empirerdquo offeredthe autonomy sought by workers resistant to debilitating industriallabor983089983092 For Melville Barnumrsquos display of Santa Annarsquos prosthesisexposes the uneven articulation of the working-class rhetoric of dis-ability and regeneration with the elite language of loss and indem-nity Moby-Dick narrates I argue how hegemonic redeployments ofthe working-class rhetoric of loss transformed the hands of industry




seeking autonomy through an imperial prosthetic into the prosthesesof an Ahabian empire

Figuring the Prosthetic The Prosthetic of the Figure

In 1048625104863210486271048633 France invaded Mexico in order to secure the property andinvestments of French nationals In a proleptic enactment of the futureUS rationale for invasion France cited as its casus belli the necessityof gaining indemnification for damages done by Mexican citizens983089983093General Santa Anna disgraced since his defeat at the hands of Anglocolonizers in Texas took the French invasion as a chance to restorehis political and military reputation This restoration came at a great

cost however during action at Vera Cruz he lost his left leg In apublic relations maneuver anticipating Barnumrsquos capitalization on itsprosthetic replacement Santa Anna had his amputated limb placed ina crystal jar and buried beneath a gaudy monument in a cemetery nearMexico City Having suffered bodily loss in the defense of his nationagainst the French imperial power he parlayed this obvious sign of hispatriotism into power in Mexican political life983089983094 News of Santa Annarsquos injury traveled to the United States through a

variety of media Anecdotes about it were published in Frances Calde-roacuten de la Barcarsquos extraordinarily popular Life in Mexico (1048625104863210486281048627) a textMelville owned983089983095 Discussions of Santa Annarsquos missing legmdashand hisostentatious memorial to itmdashwere set pieces in US travelersrsquo accountsof Mexico983089983096 and this interest would continue into the 1048625104863210486291048624s and wellbeyond983089983097 For a reading public accustomed to the exotic stories com-posing William H Prescottrsquos successful Conquest of Mexico (1048625104863210486281048627) thetale of Santa Annarsquos lost leg provided contemporary reenactment of a

romantic hemispheric past983090983088 Interest in the leg however exceeded its anecdotal value For pro-imperial US Americans the memorial to the leg was a moment offigurative excess in which Santa Anna illegitimately appropriated lossas a gain generating symbolic surplus from material remains Alongthese lines Albert Gilliam records his experiences in the cemeterywhere the leg was buried

But what diverted my respect from the consecrated place in a con-

siderable manner and almost annihilated the effect of the useful les-sons which the cemetery had impressed upon my mind of humanlife and its end was the beholding the pride and pageantry of a




monument surmounted with the arms and the flag of Mexico float-ing from its corners over the mortal remains of the left leg of theimmortal Dictator Santa Anna The hero must excuse me for since

his leg has become public property it cannot escape comment andthat too will be made with blame or praise as freely as his owndeeds just as his person will be eulogized after he himself shallhave descended to the tomb983090983089

As Gilliam reads it Santa Anna established a perverse synecdochebetween his leg and his person assigning his lost part the affectivestatus of a fully dead body The authority Santa Anna derived from thisdisplay is illegitimate because catachrestic his personal and literal

loss is placed improperly within a national symbolic economy assum-ing a metaphorical value that exceeds the value of other Mexicanbodies Gilliam thus takes delight in describing what he codes as patri-otic vandalism ldquoOne of the flag-staffs of the monument was brokendown perhaps by some one of his countrymen more daring than therest to retrieve the honour of his countryrsquos flag and show his oppo-sition to the highest authority upon earthrdquo983090983090 George Wilkins Kendallsimilarly casts Santa Annarsquos memorial to his leg as an improper capi-talization on his loss

[A] general holy-day was given and the limb was borne about inprocession with great pomp and ceremony Santa Anna makesmuch capital out of this affairmdashenough to console him probably forthe loss of the limb On several occasions it has been carried aboutin procession and I have little doubt that the leg in pickle is of infi-nitely more service to him than when attached to his own properperson983090983091

Once more the generalrsquos leg signifies catachrestically gaining a ref-erential power ldquoinfinitely morerdquo than it possessed when its semiosiswas appropriately tied and subordinated to Santa Annarsquos ldquoown properpersonrdquo The general Kendall suggests symbolically speculates onhis limb appropriating a surplus ldquocapitalrdquo from his bodily disappro-priation Playing the role of an imperialist Starbuck Kendall codesSanta Annarsquos attempt to form a national community of mourning asan inappropriate prosthesis for the loss the general suffered in anti-

imperial warfare The general however had prostheses other than the political sym-bolic Santa Anna had a prosthetic limb manufactured by a Yankee






thetic leg983091983088 When the regiment seized the leg as a curious trophyensuing cultural productions shifted the meanings ascribed to pros-theses Palmerrsquos prosthesis had materialized ideologies of peaceful

liberal capitalism suggesting that northeastern markets and manufac-turers could regenerate the nation The discourse surrounding Santa Annarsquos captured leg however intimated that militarism and territo-

rial expansion could regenerate subjects whose autonomy seemed atriskmdashparticularly neo-Jeffersonian Jacksonian workers threatenedby the possibility of becoming what Karl Marx called the ldquoinanimatelimbsrdquo of urban industry983091983089 Santa Annarsquos leg gained an exhibitionaryvalue different than that of Palmerrsquos prosthesis requiring a differentcultural institution for its display Whereas Palmerrsquos leg was on display

at trade exhibitions Santa Annarsquos leg was immediately presented atand figured in terms of museums Even the soldiers discussing Santa Annarsquos leg invariably accordedit an exhibitionary value One balladeer ventriloquizes Santa Annarsquosimagined lament in these terms ldquoFor in the museum I will see Theleg I left behind merdquo983091983090 George Furber a volunteer soldier similarlyfigures one of Santa Annarsquos deserted homes as a museum writing ofhis perambulations through its ldquogalleriesrdquo ldquoIn the long gallery we

smiled as we observed one of the generalrsquos artificial legs lying therebooted finely and excellently manufacturedrdquo983091983091 Commenting on theenterprising spirit that created a virtual cottage industry around Santa

Anna a British soldier in the service of the United States records howldquoseveral enterprising Yankees for some months after [the battle]continued to exhibit veritable wooden legs of lsquoSanta Annarsquo through thetowns and cities of the States with great success making a pretty con-siderable speculation of itrdquo983091983092 Although the soldier intends ldquoveritable

wooden legsrdquo as an ironic commentary on the forgeries of the pros-thetic that circulated as authentic this seeming paradox underscoresthe fact that Santa Annarsquos leg gained a metaphorical value indifferentto the literal and particular legs that acted as bearers of that value (asMarx will say of the materiality of commodities) These real and imagined exhibitions of the legmdashas we will see evenmore clearly with Barnummdashspectacularly demonstrated the regen-erative benefits that US imperialism offered Jacksonian workersRhetorically labor under capitalism fragments the body of the workerto the extent that it can be primarily figured through the ldquoabusive syn-ecdocherdquo of hands983091983093 The leg of Santa Anna offered an imperial pros-




thesis through which US workers could be restored to a full and eth-nically reconciled republican body George Strattonrsquos play The Siege of

Mexico or the Confrere of Mechanics (1048625104863210486291048624) for instance dramatically

links ethnic reconciliation the regeneration of artisanal autonomy andthe museum-like exhibition of Mexico The playrsquos protagonist is Hansa German American bootmaker who lives in Mexico during the war

Juxtaposing the cramped confines of the northeastern United Statesto the expansiveness of Mexico Hans declares ldquo[Y]ou would hardlybelieve that the humble abode of a New England mechanic and fac-tory girl is a part of the once spacious palace of the magnificent Mon-tezuma the Secondrdquo His new home is so spacious that he intends totransform it into a museum telling a Catholic monk that he ldquomean[s]

at some future day to open this remnant of Montezumarsquos Palace as amuseumrdquo and that he ldquowant[s] [the monk] for one of its curiositiesrdquo983091983094Indeed the joking exhibition of individuals is a staple of MelvillersquosYankee Doodle articles in which he routinely proposes that Barnumexhibit Generals Taylor and Santa Anna983091983095 Since the play was pub-lished in 1048625104863210486291048624 it is likely that the playwright had Barnumrsquos museumdisplay of Santa Annarsquos leg in mind Imagining the conquered territoryas a museum the artisan Hans exhibits an image of Mexico as a non-

constricting space where workers could work honestly autonomouslyand for themselves

Yankee Doodle and the American Museum

Santa Anna and the US soldiers he battled were united in this theyboth made ldquospeculationsrdquo on the generalrsquos leg subjecting it to multiplefigurative operations As we have seen US observers judged inappro-

priate Santa Annarsquos transformation of his literal loss into a symbolicsurplus This surplus of sovereignty had the effect of rendering com-mensurate the generalrsquos severed leg and the fully dead hauntinglysuggesting that the Mexican nation itself functioned as Santa Annarsquosfigurative prosthetic Examining the prosthetic limbrsquos display in the

American Museum Melville transposes this critique claiming thatUS proimperialists themselves gained an improper symbolic surplusfrom the leg a surplus they put to work to secure working-class con-sent to imperial war In a letter to his brother Gansevoort Melvillersquosironic but anxiety-laden account of the outbreak of the war focuses onthe figurative means deployed to produce the warrsquos cross-class appeal




People here are all in a state of delirium about the Mexican War A military arder pervades all ranksmdashMilitia Colonels wax red in

their coat facingsmdashand rsquoprentice boys are running off to the wars

by scoresmdashNothing is talked of but the ldquoHalls of the Montezumasrdquo And to hear folks prate about those purely figurative apartmentsone would suppose that they were another Versailles where ourdemocratic rabble meant to ldquomake a night of itrdquo ere long983091983096

Melville understood popular support for imperialism as a state of delir-ium marked by intense affects and swift unreflective action Threeyears later in Mardi (1048625104863210486281048633) he linked lapses in self-consciousness topopular support for imperial war ldquoAnd though unlike King Bello of

Dominora your great chieftain sovereign-kings may not declare warof himself nevertheless has he done a still more imperial thingmdashgone to war without declaring intentions You yourselves were pre-cipitated upon a neighboring nation ere you knew your spears were inyour handsrdquo983091983097 More acted upon than acting the populace wars in thepassive voice unconsciously giving popular legitimacy to the illegalacts of a thinly veiled President Polk This passivity also surprises Ish-mael and the crew of the Pequod who ldquomarvel[ ] how it was that theythemselves became so excitedrdquo by Ahabrsquos performance ( MD 104862510486311048629)Melville like Ishmael is attuned to if not admiring of the immensepotential of this ldquodemocratic rabblerdquo figuring their revolutionarypower through an allusion to Versailles Yet this ldquofrantic democracyrdquois articulated with delirious imperialism ( MD 104862510486301048628) Melvillersquos letterposes important questions Why did the democratic rabble subordi-nate its power to and articulate its desires with elite imperialism andwhat representational strategies produced inflated and managed thisdelirious desire for empire What indeed is the relationship between

the ldquopurely figurative apartmentsrdquo of the ldquoHalls of the Montezumasrdquoand the ldquomilitary ardor pervad[ing] all ranksrdquo The figurative and figuring apartments of Barnumrsquos AmericanMuseum offer some answers Harrison has argued that museumswere critical locations for the staging of disputes between high andlow culture during the 1048625104863210486281048624s983092983088 The geographical location of Barnumrsquosmuseum maps the cultural antagonisms the museum had to negoti-ate983092983089 Caught between high and low the Bowery Brsquohoys and the New

York middle class Barnum attempted to ldquoobliterate the social faultlines crisscrossing his museumrdquo so that it would appeal to middle-class audiences as well as members of the upward-identifying work-




ing class983092983090 The museum had a conduct code of behavior in order toensure middle-class decorum and Barnum had plain-clothes detec-tives in the crowds to ferret out improper behavior and of course pros-

titutes983092983091 Thus even while much of the content of the museum was forworking-class audiences the performances the museum demandedwere in keeping with middle-class norms983092983092 These norms frequentlyregistered in terms of a national identity that sutured over the faultlines of class The American Museum was arrayed with a set of flagspatriotic slogans and so on much later one could purchase timbersfrom Abraham Lincolnrsquos cabin in the gift shop983092983093 Barnumrsquos museumarticulated this urban nationalism with US imperialism illustratingShelley Streebyrsquos observation that there were ldquomultiple connections

between city and empirerdquo983092983094 More specifically US national culturemdashand working-class urban culture in particularmdashof the later 1048625104863210486281048624s wasstructured through US imperialism in Mexico Thus the position ofBarnumrsquos museum within New York needs to be read vis-agrave-vis its posi-tion within an imperial geography in which New York was linked tothe Southwest and Mexico through the circulation of sensational nar-ratives and displays The circulation of Santa Annarsquos leg spectacularly articulates New

York cultural antagonisms with imperial territorialism in Mexico Bar-numrsquos exhibition of the limb began on 10486261048630 June 1048625104863210486281048631 Even though someclaimed that the prosthesis on display was a fake the minimal cost ofadmission (twenty-five cents) assured the false limb a large audienceof upward-identifying patriots drawn from the urban working class983092983095

The limb itself however was not the only thing attendees would haveconsumed It is likely that much of the history of appropriation I have

just traced would have been incorporated into Barnumrsquos exhibition983092983096

Neil Harris describes Barnumrsquos representational practices The objects inside the museum and Barnumrsquos activities outside

focused attention on their own structures and operations wereempirically testable and enabledmdashor at least invitedmdashaudiencesand participants to learn how they worked They appealed becausethey exposed their processes of action [O]ne might term thisan ldquooperational aestheticrdquo an approach to experience that equatedbeauty with information and technique983092983097

Barnumrsquos things were never Starbuckian ldquodumb thingsrdquo whose simplemateriality provided sensational stuff for visual consumption Rather




to get the full experience of Barnumrsquos museum audiences had toengage with the objects to seek information about Barnumrsquos mode ofdisplaying the thing as well as about the thing itself Bluford Adams

has argued for the centrality of narrative to Barnumrsquos operational aes-thetic claiming that ldquoBarnumrsquos stories were far more important thanthe objects they supposedly contextualizedrdquo As he describes it ldquonar-ratives of acquisitionrdquo emphasized ldquowhere [the object] had come fromhow it had arrived and how much it had costrdquo983093983088 Barnumrsquos things func-tioned as an occasion for the story that was told about them an objectcrystallized a web of social relations and thingly histories from whichits full meaning came Regarding Santa Annarsquos prosthesis audienceswould have been encouraged to participate in the imperial appro-

priation of the limb (and the land) by imaginatively and narrativelyreenacting its history of acquisition This material and narrative appropriation of imperialism by Bar-numrsquos working-class audience assisted in the formation of free-laborrepublican militarism providing a kind of resolution for the classantagonisms that threatened to consume urban centers of the North-east Melville recognized the powerful cross-class appeal of imperialwar as well as the way empire was being deployed as a tool for man-

aging the demands posed by free-laborists and radicals in the North-east Implicit in his description of the cultural atmosphere of New

York is a critique of imperial representational modalities that pre-sented Mexico as a land of riches waiting to be snatched at little cost

As we have seen the ldquopurely figurative apartmentsrdquo were continu-ally presented to US workers as having material factual existencethrough sensational literature and exhibitions In Yankee Doodle Mel-ville claims that these figures have no literal referentmdashthat they are

in short humbug Melvillersquos article on Santa Annarsquos leg deflates by satirically inflat-ing the symbolic value of the imperial trophy

983161983137983150983147983141983141 983140983151983151983140983148983141 has come to one conclusion If the whole world ofanimated naturemdashhuman or brutemdashat any time produces a mon-strosity or a wonder she has but one object in viewmdashto benefit983138983137983154983150983157983149 983138983137983154983150983157983149 under the happy influence of a tallow candlein some corner or other of Yankee land was born sole heir to all

her lean men fat women dwarfs two-headed cows amphibioussea-maidens large-eyed owls small-eyed mice rabbit-eating ana-condas bugs monkies and mummies His domain extends even to




the forest and he claims exclusive right to all wooden legs lost asestrays on the field of battle and as a matter of course to the bootsin which they are encased We give an interior view of the Barnum

Property embracing a life-sized exhibition of the great Santa-AnnaBoot which has been brought onmdashby the loops of two able-bodiedyoung negroesmdashdirect from the seat of war983093983089

The joking tone of the article turns critical when Barnum is figuredless as the ldquoheirrdquo to the weird than as an appropriator of loss ldquoHisdomain extends even to the forest and heclaims exclusive right to allwooden legs lost as strays on the field of battlerdquo (italics added) Bar-numrsquos ldquodomainrdquo gives him a sovereign right to appropriate loss to

spectacularize it and to speculate on it as if remnants of othersrsquo losseswere his rightful and exclusive property Melville repeats with a slightdifference the very critique US commentators made of Santa Annarsquosmemorial of his lost limb Barnum speculates with (anotherrsquos) lossimproperly appropriating surplus capital from (anotherrsquos) bodily dis-appropriation Barnumrsquos appropriation of profit from loss is mirroredin the way the leg itself loses its literal referent and gains a metaphori-cal surplus Melville satirically marks the bootrsquos metaphoric and affec-tive inflation by literally inflating its size It was carried by ldquotwo able-bodied young negroes direct from the seat of warrdquo and advertisedas ldquo983151983150983141 983156983144983151983157983155983137983150983140 983156983145983150983141983155 983138983145983143983141983154 983156983144983137983150 983137983150983161 983151983156983144983141983154 983149983137983150983155 983148983141983143rdquo (seefig 1048625) The metaphorical inflation of the leg inversely corresponds tothe decrease in price to view it for Melville claims that Yankee Doodlersquosdescription of the object ldquogiv[es] for a sixpence what [Barnum]would have charged a quarter forrdquo983093983090 The leg enlarges as its potentialworking-class audience grows the imperial signifier inflates as a func-tion of working-class imperial desire The class-leveling democratic

space of the museum ldquoprecipitatesrdquo (as in Mardi ) a ldquofrantic democ-racyrdquo whose excited rush to view the boot seems to further inflate itssize The gigantic leg functions as a synecdoche of the museum but italso threatens to incorporate and contain the entire space In a process

Jacques Derrida calls ldquoinvaginationrdquo the part threatens to make thewhole a part of itself983093983091 The American Museum (the boot itself coversover the word American ) risks being subsumed under a Mexican pros-thesis the United States risks being subsumed by the ldquopurely figura-

tive apartmentsrdquo of Mexico The prosthesis of empire might take overthe full body of the nation



Figure 1 ldquoView of the Barnum Propertyrdquo woodcut fromYankee Doodle 31 July 1837




Melvillersquos critique of Barnumrsquos display of the prosthesis does doubleduty as a critique of imperial discourses on regeneration and repa-ration While the war in elite terms was represented as a means of

securing indemnity for lost property in popular terms the justificationfor war was represented through dismembered violated bodies Thefigure of the raped woman was central to this imaginary but so toowere the wounded bodies of US men on the southwestern frontier983093983092

These bodies demanded a response as Congressman Hugh Haralsondeclared ldquoBlood cries aloud upon us for actionrdquo983093983093 For SenatorLewis Cass the necessity of avenging wounded bodies and of pre-venting such atrocities from happening again required a full militaryinvasion983093983094 Securing the wholeness of American bodies necessitated

geographic expansion and working-class proimperialists promotedthis logic Not only would war provide imaginary reparation to thewounded and dead but the material form of reparationmdashterritorymdashoffered what Frederick Jackson Turner would call ldquoperennial rebirthrdquoto the northeastern proletariat suffering in the manufacturing cities983093983095George Lippardrsquos epigraph for his Legends of Mexico (1048625104863210486281048631)mdashThomasPainersquos charge that ldquo[w]e fight not to enslave nor for conquest Butto make room upon the earth for honest men to live inrdquomdashexpresses

neatly the link between imperial war territory and proletarian regen-eration983093983096 Ahabrsquos demand for vengeance thematizes this critique Yankee Doodlersquos analysis suggests that imperial war was not offeringa whole regenerated body to US workers Rather in their enthusias-tic consumption of the metaphor of imperial gain the working classsimply exchanges synecdoches who once were ldquohandsrdquo have nowbecome ldquolegsrdquo The monstrous size of Santa Annarsquos leg bigger thanall the bodies rushing beneath it suggests that if urban workers are

being reincorporated and regenerated this reincorporation still leavesthese workers as mere parts of a body The very symbolics that securetheir enthusiasm and gain their consent leave the democratic rabblesubordinated within a national design Melville I propose is alertingus to the social logic of hegemony formation in which a single part ofa social body gains an inflated and representational status that subor-dinates all other parts of the social body It is this logic that Moby-Dick scrutinizes when Ahab convenes his crew on the quarterdeck of the

Pequod securing their consent to dismember his dismemberer




Barnum on Board

It is tempting to read Ahab as Santa Anna given the similarity of thefigurative operations to which they subject their lossmdashnot to men-

tion the more obvious trait they share Yet Melvillersquos relationship tothe general was mediated through Barnumrsquos exhibit and it is Bar-numrsquos representational practices and their class effects that Mel-ville explores in Moby-Dick In an article documenting Melvillersquos cri-tique of Jacksonianism and free-labor ideology Ian McGuire arguesthat the novel is ldquointerested in examining the reasons for [free-laborrepublicanismrsquos] failure as an economic and political doctrinerdquo983093983097Free-labor republicanism did not simply fail however it became

imperial Melville is interested in how territorial imperialism cameto be accepted as an alternative to the industrial capitalist order thatfree-labor republicans resisted arguing in his Yankee Doodle articlethat deliteralized and metaphorized things enabled workers to imag-ine empire as a regenerative program In the relations between Ahaband his crew as between Barnum and his audience Melville isolatestwo figurative operations through which imperial things were imbuedwith affect and meaning synecdoche through which a single part ofa whole comes to stand in for the whole and metaphor in which afigure gains an unstable nonliteral referent that inflates its signifyingcapacity Ahabrsquos loss stands in for the grievances of his crew in gen-eral and thenmdashas we can see through the reparation Ahab demandsthe sublime Thing of the white whalemdashthis loss is inflated to meta-physical dimensions It is through these figurative operations that

Ahabrsquos crew willfully turns from whaling to revengemdashor from indus-try to empire Read from the perspective of Santa Annarsquos prosthesisand the cultural history it indexes Moby-Dick decomposes the logic

through which working-class resistance to industrial capitalism pro-duced an imperialist hegemonic bloc983094983088 Industrial capitalism Moby-Dick suggests exposes subjects toheteronomous violence disaggregating social collectivities and indi-vidual bodies Ahab of course loses his limb on a whaling voyage Pipgoes mad and ldquo[t]oes are scarce among veteran blubber-room menrdquo( MD 104862810486291048632) In the chapter ldquoA Squeeze of the Handrdquo Ishmael markshow capitalism splits subjects synecdochalizing them into a commu-

nity of ldquohandsrdquo His enthusiasm stands in marked contrast to Jack-sonian fears about the loss of autonomy for Ishmael the workersrsquo




disembodied but mingling parts open a new form of collectivity onethat does not call for bodily regeneration or social reincorporation

This possibility however is foreclosed and Ishmael maintains that if

capitalism unites dispersed subjects it maintains them in a disaggre-gated dispersal Commenting on the cosmopolitan crew he turns theirisland provenance into a metaphor for a dispersed social being ldquoTheywere nearly all Islanders in the Pequod Isolatoes too I call such notacknowledging the common continent of men but each Isolato livingon a separate continent of his ownrdquo ( MD 104862510486271048625) Ishmael notes that evenwhen capitalism brings disparate subjects from all over the world intothe enclosed space of a ship it lacks the figurative resources to articu-late these isolated continents the only metaphorics available to capi-

talism are those that point to a sociality of estranged dispersal Marxrsquos Eighteenth Brumaire (published a year after Moby-Dickmdash1048625104863210486291048626mdashandin New York as well) famously attends to this dispersal-in-unity ldquo[T]he great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple additionof isomorphous magnitudes much as potatoes in a sack form a sackof potatoesrdquo Moby-Dick comes to much the same conclusion as MarxldquoThey cannot represent themselves they must be representedrdquo983094983089 IfRogin argues that ldquoonly Ahabrsquos allegory gives Moby-Dick its narra-

tiverdquo it is because Ahabrsquos quest gives the Pequod the social cohesionthat capitalism lacks ( SG 104862510486251048630) Ishmael figures this cohered society asa republican collectivity federated through grief ldquoYet now federatedalong one keel what a set these Isolatoes were An Anacharsis Clootzdeputation from all the isles of the sea and all the ends of the earthaccompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the worldrsquos grievancesbefore that bar from which not very many of them ever come backrdquo( MD 104862510486271048626) Ahab federates this community of shared grief through the

careful staging of his lost leg his particular loss stands in for and rep-resents the grievances of the whole crew Ahab in other words offershis loss as a synecdoche for the crewrsquos grief a social-symbolic actionbest described by theorists of hegemony The concept of hegemony describes the ways in which nonidenti-cal classes (with therefore nonidentical interests) join together in amakeshift unity Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe write that in ahegemonic articulation of society

a set of particularities establish relations of equivalence betweenthemselves It becomes necessary however to represent thetotality of the chain beyond the mere differential particularisms of




the equivalential links What are the means of representation Aswe argue only one particularity whose body is split for withoutceasing to be its own particularity it transforms its body in the rep-

resentation of a universality transcending it 983094983090For a ldquoset of particularitiesrdquo (like Ishmaelrsquos ldquosetrdquo of ldquoIsolatoesrdquo) toform a politically cohesive unit one particularity within this articu-lated network needs to serve as a synecdoche as a part functioningto represent the whole chain of equivalencies as if universal Withhis literally split body Ahab performs this hegemonic articulationtransforming his lost leg and his visible prosthesis into a synecdo-chal object capable of mediating between his own particular injury

and the general grievances of the crew The hegemonic signifier hasthe phallic function of providing symbolic consistency to the socialfield As Laclau and Mouffe put it Jacques Lacanrsquos ldquomaster-signifierinvolves the notion of a particular element assuming a lsquouniversalrsquostructuring function within a certain discursive field rdquo At thesame time ldquo[W]hatever organization that field has is only the resultof that function rdquo983094983091 Hegemony formation is a poetic act in whichhegemonic signifiers assume the position of the phallus and re-formsocial-symbolic relations Ahab Rogin suggests ldquoimposes allegoricalcontrol and determinate meaningrdquo hegemonic signifiers impose thismeaning by articulating disarticulated particularities within a uni-fying narrative ( SG 104862510486251048625) In line with this reading Leslie Katz hascalled attention to the ldquoimage-making power of the amputeersquos staterdquoin Moby-Dick983094983092 In ldquoThe Quarter-deckrdquo Ahab federates the crew by deploying manyof the rhetorical representational and performative techniques com-mon to US working-class culturemdashparticularly those deployed by

Barnum Like Barnum Ahab offers a narrative that enables his crewto imaginatively appropriate and consume the history by which heacquired his object Ahabrsquos narrative however is not one of simpleacquisition it is also one of bodily dispossession The crew comes toappropriate Ahabrsquos loss as if it were its own Ishmael recounts ldquoI Ish-mael was one of that crew my shouts had gone up with the rest myoath had been welded with theirs A wild mystical sympatheticalfeeling was in me Ahabrsquos quenchless feud seemed mine With greedy

ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom Iand all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revengerdquo ( MD104862510486331048628 italics added) Ahabrsquos staging of his loss and the crewrsquos identifi-






This intensity thrills the crew When Ahab declares their shifted pur-pose (ldquoAnd this is what ye have shipped for menrdquo) the crew mirrorstheir increasing proximity to Ahabrsquos psycho-affective state by liter-

ally moving closer to Ahab as they express their assent to his mis-sion ldquolsquoAye ayersquo shouted the harpooneers and seamen running closerto the excited old manrdquo Ahab even ritualizes the genre of the con-tract ldquo lsquoWhat say ye men will ye splice hands on it nowrsquordquo ( MD 104862510486311048631)

As Ishmael makes clear however this splicing of hands did not appearto the crew as an ordinary capitalist contractmdashthe kinds of contracts

Jacksonian workers feared would make them wage slavesmdashbut as anldquooathrdquo Unlike the ldquoA Squeeze of the Handrdquo chapter in which bodilesshands ldquosqueeze squeeze squeezerdquo in an ecstatic refusal of reincor-

poration captain and crew incorporate themselves in order to effect asymbolic reembodiment Ahabrsquos synecdochalization of his loss recodes the social-symbolicfield of the Pequod recasting the capitalist value and object relationsthat structured the social life of the ship and offering the crew an alter-native to contracts and capitalism When Ishmael signs his contractto ship on the Pequod Bildad and Peleg subject him to a humiliatingevaluation and devaluation of his skills dictating and diminishing the

value of his labor ( MD 10486321048629ndash10486321048631) Ahabrsquos oath with its intimate volun-tarist and masculine splicing of hands stands in marked contrast tothe contracts of capitalism The doubloon that Ahab posts as a rewardsimulates the splicing as a moment of contract formation at the sametime it marks Ahabrsquos ability to determine and declare a new modalityof value relations The doubloon is less an object with which onewould purchase goods on land (worth sixteen dollars about double anunskilled whalerrsquos monthly wage) and more a signifier of incorpora-

tion into the new economy of things that Ahab founds983094983095 Ahabrsquos lost leg can serve as a synecdoche for the crewrsquos griefbecause of the metaphoric value with which he inflates it His ivoryis less a prosthesis than a grim insistence on the irreparable nature ofhis loss The carpenter compares Ahabrsquos prosthesis to those availablein urban marketplaces

Time time if I but only had the time I could turn him out as neat aleg now as ever (sneezes) scraped to a lady in a parlor Those buck-

skin legs and calves of legs Irsquove seen in shop windows wouldnrsquot com-pare at all They soak water they do and of course get rheumatic




and have to be doctored (sneezes) with washes and lotions just likelive legs ( MD 104862910486251048625)

The carpenter suggests that these nearly living prostheses are nearly

literal substitutions for lost limbs Yet Ahab refuses to take his loss lit-erally rejecting commensurate substitution and the regenerative pos-sibility of capitalist exchange This becomes clearest on the quarter-deck when he smites his chest and declares to Starbuck ldquolsquoNantucketmarket If moneyrsquos to be the measurer man and the accountantshave computed their great counting-house the globe by girdling itwith guineas one to every three parts of an inch then let me tellthee that my vengeance will fetch a great premium herersquordquo ( MD 104862510486311048632)

Where capitalist market relations work through the substitutability ofobjects for money Ahab posits an alternative mode of valuing objectshere marked by the term vengeance Vengeance establishes a personalregime of values that governs the substitutability of things relatingincommensurables in an aneconomic way Ahabrsquos desire for regen-eration through violence exceeds the economy of substitution heintends to generate a surplus from his dismasting Insofar as the cap-tain desires access to that ldquolsquounknown but still reasoning thingrsquordquo stand-ing behind the phenomenal world Ahabrsquos bodily loss is converted intoa metaphysical gainmdashthe Ding an sich for his missing leg ( MD 104862510486311048632) Ahab deliteralizes and metaphorizes his loss a lost leg becomesa white whale His generation of symbolic surplus from literal lossrecalls Santa Anna who turned his amputation into political capitalBarnum who turned Santa Annarsquos prosthetic limb into profit and theworking-class audience of the Yankee Doodle sketch whose enthusi-asm for Barnumrsquos exhibit seems to increase the physical size of theprosthesis itself More generally Ahabrsquos inflationary logic mirrors

the logic of claims made by proponents of the war on Mexico Polkmight not have demanded access to a noumenal Thing but he defi-nitely wanted more than the United States claimed to have lost Theanonymous author of The Conquest of Mexico (1048625104863210486281048630) for instancecites Polkrsquos identification of a series of ldquounredressed injuries inflictedby the Mexican authorities and people on the persons and propertyof citizens of the United Statesrdquo and provides an index that detailsthe exact monetary amount of damages done983094983096 As Mexico was fiscally

bankrupt however the United States would have difficulty recoveringthe actual value of losses The author then abjures the logic of finan-




cial substitution claiming that only conquest would provide commen-surate reparation ldquo[T]here is no mode of [indemnification] but thatof invasion and conquest The Mexican republic is politically socially

and morally dissolute It is financially exhausted and if we wouldobtain indemnity at all it must be in its territoryrdquo Yet The Conquest of

Mexico admits that redress is a providential pretext that its calculusof loss is a fiction for gain ldquoIn retribution for [Mexicorsquos] corruptionsdivine providence has allowed it to create an unavoidable necessityfor invasionrdquo983094983097 The United States would ldquoobtainrdquo so great an indem-nity that it would in turn pay Mexico983095983088 As Rogin points out pacifistslike Theodore Parker compared the imperial United States to the bib-lical Ahab who cites a fictive injury as a pretext for killing Naboth and

claiming his coveted vineyard ( SG 104862510486261048627) Narratives of loss groundedimperialismrsquos economy of regeneration Starbuckrsquos failed reinscrip-tion of capitalist substitution is an attempt to get out of this ldquoblasphe-mousrdquo economy of inflationary reparation James Duban reads Star-buckrsquos feckless attempt to reinscribe capitalist value relations as anallegory for the failure of Whigs to provide strong opposition to thedeclaration of war983095983089 It also marks the failure of economistic argu-mentsmdashlike those deployed by activists in New Englandmdashto ground a

socially thick antiwar movement983095983090 Like Barnumrsquos ldquogreat Santa Anna bootrdquo the mad captain providesa metaphor of loss and gain capacious enough to provide a ldquofigurativeapartmentrdquo for the crew However if Ahab offers his loss as a repre-sentative and inflated metaphor the crew maintains its significance

The irony of hegemony formation as Melville suggests in his Yankee

Doodle sketch is that the sign that subordinates a class to the hege-mon in fact only gains its signifying power though the desire of the

subordinated class Just as the working-class audience maintainedand inflated the signifying capacity of Santa Annarsquos boot so too doesthe crew maintain the sign of Ahabrsquos leg In the chapter ldquoAhabrsquos Legrdquowe are told that Ahab has had an accident ldquo[H]is ivory limb havingbeen so violently displaced that it had stake-wise smitten and all butpierced his groin nor was it without extreme difficulty that the ago-nizing wound was entirely curedrdquo ( MD 104862910486241048629) Significantly this woundis a ldquosecretrdquo and the reader discovers ldquowhy it was that for a certainperiod both before and after the sailing of the Pequod he had hid-den himself away with such Grand-Lama-like exclusivenessrdquo Dur-ing this period Ishmael wanted nothing more than to ldquolsquo[c]lap eye on




Captain Ahabrsquordquo In ldquoThe Prophetrdquo Ishmael ldquorivetedrdquo by Elijahrsquos storyreceives an ldquoambiguous half-hinting half-revealing shrouded sort oftalkrdquo that produces in him ldquoall kinds of vague wonderments and half-

apprehensions and all connected with the Pequod and Captain Ahaband the leg he had lost rdquo Ahabrsquos lack of his sensational thing hisinvisibility and the rumor that swirls around him make his appear-ance on the quarterdeck that much more affectively intense He onlyemerges into visibility once the carpenter hasmdashin secretmdashprovidedhim with his sensational prosthesis ldquoWell manmakerrdquo Ahab callsout to him ( MD 104862910486241048630 10486321048624 104862510486241048627 104862910486251048626) Manmaker indeed the crew lit-erally produces the representational means of its own hegemonicsubordination

Ahab exposes the crewrsquos subordination as the novel reaches its con-clusion effectively dismissing Ishmaelrsquos republican figure of the ldquoAna-charsis Clootz deputation federated along one keelrdquo ( MD 104862510486271048626) Inhis reading of Barnumrsquos exhibition Melville undercuts the Mexican

Warrsquos rhetoric of bodily regeneration and reparation by depicting theincorporation of the working class into national culture as a displace-ment of synecdoches laboring ldquohandsrdquo became ldquolegsrdquo This critiquebecomes explicit in Moby-Dick Ahab claiming a metaphoric existence

beyond his literal body promotes a radical individualism akin to thatoffered by the frontier ldquolsquoYe see an old man cut down to the stumpleaning on a shivered lance propped up on a lonely foot rsquoTis Ahabmdashhis bodyrsquos part but Ahabrsquos soulrsquos a centipede that moves upon a hun-dred legsrsquordquo ( MD 104863010486251048625) Even after losing his second prosthetic limb

Ahab claims ldquo lsquoIn his own proper and inaccessible being Ahab isfor ever Ahab manrsquordquo He locates himself beyond any kind of embodi-ment prosthetic or fleshy ldquolsquo[E]ven with a broken bone old Ahab is

untouched and I account no living bone of mine one jot more me thanthis dead one thatrsquos lostrsquordquo ( MD 104863010486251048624) Ahabrsquos refusal of the ldquolsquomutual joint-stock worldrsquordquo in the name of self-making is however revealed to

be a ruse he is still in a state of ldquointer-indebtednessrdquo but as the hege-mon is to the hegemonized ( MD 10486301048632 104862910486251048628) In the culminating scenes

Ahab reveals that his centipede soul is composed of the bodies of hismen ldquolsquoYe are not other men but my arms and my legsrsquordquo ( MD 104863010486251048633)Empire Melville proposes offers no regeneration for the violation ofliving a synecdochalized life There is no exit from the figurative Moby-Dick suggests Starbuckrsquosattempt to mute the social garrulousness of objectsmdashto show things to




power as it weremdashhas all the political efficaciousness of pointing outthat Santa Annarsquos prosthesis was just leather cork and wood To takeSanta Annarsquos leg literally or to decide that Moby-Dick is just a whale

is an impossible taskmdashno one else took it so Yet as Melville intimatesit is not the literalness of things but the contextually situated way theyare figured that makes them socially and politically generative andthat renders the social legible Moby-Dick rigorously dissects the figu-rative operations through which US proimperialists transformedSanta Annarsquos leg into an imperial prosthesis a metaphor of the regen-erative autonomy that Mexico offered to the New York working classRead with the history of Santa Annarsquos leg the textual context statusand aims of the novel dramatically shift Insistently calling attention

to the political effects of the figurative Melville offers a hermeneuticfor readingmdashand critiquingmdashthe social grammar of collectivity for-mation Moby-Dick is less an allegory of the American 1048625104863210486281048632 than ananalysis one that offers a rhetorical theory of the political history thatSanta Annarsquos prosthesis metonymically insinuates into the text

University of Pennsylvania

Notes

I would like to thank Amy Kaplan David Kazanjian Murad Idris Ania LoombaPhil Maciak and Ashley Cohen for their insightful comments on this essay1048625 See Jesse Alemaacuten ldquoThe Ethnic in the Canon or On Finding Santa Annarsquos

Wooden Legrdquo MELUS 10486261048633 (fall-winter 1048626104862410486241048628) 104862510486301048629ndash104863210486261048626 Herman Melville ldquoView of the Barnum Propertyrdquo Yankee Doodle 10486251048626

March 1048625104863210486311048624 reprinted in ldquoThe Piazza Talesrdquo and Other Prose Pieces 983089983096983091983097ndash

983089983096983094983088 vol 1048633 of The Writings of Herman Melville ed Harrison Hayford Alma A MacDougall and G Thomas Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago

Northwestern Univ Press and the Newberry Library 1048625104863310486321048631) 1048628104862810486321048627 Herman Melville Moby-Dick or The Whale (1048625104863210486291048625 reprint New York Pen-

guin Classics 1048626104862410486241048627) 10486311048632 Further references to Moby-Dick are to this edi-tion and will be cited parenthetically in the text as MD See Les HarrisonThe Temple and the Forum The American Museum and Cultural Authority

in Hawthorne Melville Stowe and Whitman (Tuscaloosa Univ of Ala-bama Press 1048626104862410486241048631) 10486331048632ndash104862510486241048629

1048628 Elaine Freedgood The Ideas in Things Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian

Novel (Chicago Univ of Chicago Press 1048626104862410486241048630) 10486251048625

1048629 My thanks to Jos Lavery for this point1048630 Freedgood The Ideas in Things 104862510486261048631 Freedgood explains ldquo[A]n object in a novel in order for it to have mean-




ing cannot be itself even in a two-dimensional scenery producing kindof way it is wrenched away from that possibility by the metaphorical rela-tion itself Objects become metaphorical (and meaningful) through aloss of many of their specific qualities They retain only those that illumi-

nate something about the predicate to which they must yieldrdquo ( The Ideasin Things 10486251048624)

1048632 My understanding of loss as productive is inspired by David L Eng andDavid Kazanjian who write that loss is not a ldquopurely negative qualityrdquobut is rather ldquoladen with creative political potentialrdquo (Eng and Kazanjianeds preface to Loss The Politics of Mourning [Berkeley and Los AngelesUniv of California Press 1048626104862410486241048627] ix)

1048633 Herman Melville Correspondence vol 10486251048628 of The Writings of Herman Mel-

ville ed Lynn Horth (Evanston and Chicago Northwestern Univ Press

and the Newberry Library 1048625104863310486331048627) 1048628104862410486251048624 Michael Paul Rogin Subversive Genealogy The Politics and Art of Herman

Melville (Berkeley and Los Angeles Univ of California Press 1048625104863310486321048629) 104862510486241048632Further references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically inthe text as SG

10486251048625 See David Chappell ldquoAhabrsquos Boat Non-European Seamen in WesternShips of Exploration and Commercerdquo in Sea Changes Historicizing the

Ocean ed Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun (New York Routledge1048626104862410486241048628) 10486311048629ndash10486321048633 Rodrigo Lazo ldquolsquoSo Spanishly Poeticrsquo Moby-Dickrsquos Dou-bloon and Latin Americardquo in ldquoUngraspable Phantomrdquo Essays on ldquoMoby-

Dickrdquo ed John Bryant Mary K Bercaw Edwards and Timothy Marr(Kent Ohio Kent State Univ Press 1048626104862410486241048630) 104862610486261048628ndash10486271048631 Ikuno Saiki ldquolsquoStrikethough the Unreasoning Masksrsquo Moby-Dick and Japanrdquo inldquoWhole Oceans

Awayrdquo Melville and the Pacific ed Jill Barnum Wyn Kelley and Christo-pher Sten (Kent Ohio Kent State Univ Press 1048626104862410486241048631) 104862510486321048627ndash10486331048632 ElizabethSchultz ldquolsquoThe Subordinate Phantomsrsquo Melvillersquos Conflicted Responseto Asia in Moby-Dickrdquo in ldquoWhole Oceans Awayrdquo ed Barnum Kelley andSten 104862510486331048633ndash104862610486251048626 Erik Rangno ldquoMelvillersquos Japan and the lsquoMarketplace Reli-gionrsquo of Terrorrdquo Nineteenth-Century Literature 10486301048626 (March 1048626104862410486241048632) 104862810486301048629ndash10486331048626

and Antonio Barrenecha ldquoConquistadors Monsters and Maps Moby- Dick in a New World ContextrdquoComparative American Studies 1048631 (March1048626104862410486241048633) 10486251048632ndash10486271048627

10486251048626 See Alexander Saxton The Rise and Fall of the White Republic Class Poli-

tics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London Verso1048625104863310486331048624) and Sean Wilentz Chants Democratic New York and the Rise of

the American Working Class 983089983095983096983096ndash983089983096983093983088 (New York Oxford Univ Press1048625104863310486321048630)

10486251048627 See David R RoedigerThe Wages of Whiteness Race and the Making of the

American Working Class (London Verso 1048625104863310486331048625)10486251048628 See Bill Brown ldquoScience Fiction the Worldrsquos Fair and the Prostheticsof Empire 1048625104863310486251048624ndash1048625104863310486251048629rdquo in Cultures of United States Imperialism ed Amy




Kaplan and Donald E Pease (Durham NC Duke Univ Press 1048625104863310486331048627)104862510486261048633ndash10486301048627 The classic text on the trope of regeneration is Richard Slotkin Regeneration through Violence The Mythology of the American Frontier

983089983094983088983088ndash983089983096983094983088 (Middletown Conn Wesleyan Univ Press 1048625104863310486311048627)

10486251048629 See Robert L Scheina Latin Americarsquos Wars The Age of the Caudillo983089983095983097983089ndash983089983096983097983097 (London Brassey 1048626104862410486241048627) 104862510486301048633

10486251048630 See Alemaacuten ldquoEthnic in the Canonrdquo 10486251048630104863210486251048631 Frances Erskine Calderoacuten de la Barca Life in Mexico 1048626 vols (Boston

Little Brown 1048625104863210486281048627) 1048626104862610486331048624ndash1048633104862510486251048632 See for instance George Frederick Augustus Ruxton Adventures in

Mexico and The Rocky Mountains (New York Harper and Brothers 1048625104863210486281048632)10486261048633 and Albert M Gilliam Travels over the Table Lands and Cordilleras of

Mexico (Philadelphia John Moore 1048625104863210486281048630) 10486281048625ndash10486291048629 104862510486261048624

10486251048633 The tale entered into childrenrsquos schoolbooks presumably to liven upaccounts of the Mexican War see Charles Augustus Goodrich A His-

tory of the United States of America Adapted to the Capacity of Youth (Bos-ton Brewer and Tileston 1048625104863210486291048626) 104862710486241048626 See also the gift book The Rough

and Ready Annual or Military Souvenir (New York Appleton 1048625104863210486281048632) aswell as George Denison Prentice Prenticeana or Wit and Humor in Para-

graphs (1048625104863210486291048633 reprint Philadelphia Claxton 1048625104863210486311048625) 104862510486281048626ndash10486281048628 10486251048632104862410486261048624 For a discussion of Prescott and US historiographyrsquos supplementation of

its past with a ldquoprimitive romanticismrdquo drawn from Mexico see AlemaacutenldquoEthnic in the Canonrdquo 104862510486301048631

10486261048625 Gilliam Travels over the Table Lands 104862510486251048633ndash1048626104862410486261048626 Ibid 104862510486261048624 See also Marcius Willsonrsquos account of the overthrow of Santa

Anna in which symbolic violence is visited upon the leg ldquoRejoicings andfestivities of the people followed The tragedy of lsquoBrutus or Romancemade Freersquo was performed at the theatre in honor of the success of therevolutionists and every thing bearing the name of Santa Annamdashhis tro-phies statues portraits were destroyed by the populace Even his ampu-tated leg which had been embalmed and buried with military honorswas disinterred dragged through the streets and broken to pieces with

every mark of indignity and contemptrdquo ( American History Comprising Historical Sketches of the Indian Tribes (New York Mark H Newman1048625104863210486281048631) 104863010486251048628

10486261048627 George Wilkins Kendall Narrative of the Texan Santa Feacute Expedition (Lon-don Henry Washbourne 1048625104863210486281048631) 104862610486241048627

10486261048628 See Alemaacuten ldquoEthnic in the Canonrdquo 10486251048630104863210486261048629 Maximilian Joseph Chelius A System of Surgery trans John South (Lon-

don Henry Renshaw 1048625104863210486281048631) 10486321048628104863010486261048630 See The Sixth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Asso-

ciation (Boston Eastburnrsquos Press 1048625104863210486291048624) 104862510486301048630ndash10486301048631 and Albert GallatinBrowne Reports of the First Exhibition of the Salem Charitable Mechanic

Association (Salem Mass Streeter and Porter 1048625104863210486281048633) 10486281048627




10486261048631 Redwood Fisher Fisherrsquos National Magazine and Industrial Record 1048627 ( July1048625104863210486281048630) 104862510486291048629

10486261048632 William Hamilton Journal of the Franklin Institute 10486251048633 ( January 1048625104863210486291048624) 1048630104862510486261048633 The reviewers note ldquoIt is for the benefit of those who have had the mis-

fortune to lose a leg not less than for the encouragement of the inventorand the manufacturers who are deserving of their patronage and who weregard as their greatest benefactors that we [doctors endorse Palmerrsquosleg] (Jefferson Church Jas M Smith N Adams Alfred Lambert EdwinSeeger R G W English and O C Chaffee)rdquo New England Botanic Medi-

cal and Surgical Journal 1048625 September 1048625104863210486281048633 10486261048631104863310486271048624 See Ezra M Prince Transactions of the McLean County Historical Society

1048625 (Bloomington Ill Pantagraph 1048625104863210486331048633) 10486261048631ndash10486271048624 and Ezra M Prince ldquoTheFourth Illinois Regiment in the War with Mexicordquo Transactions of the Illi-

nois State Historical Society 10486251048625 (Springfield Illinois State Journal 1048625104863310486241048630)104862510486311048626ndash1048632104863110486271048625 Karl Marx Grundrisse Foundations of the Critique of Political Econ-

omy trans Martin Nicolaus (New York Penguin 1048625104863310486331048627) 104863010486331048627 For linksamong free-labor republicanism flight from the cities and expansionsee Thomas R Hietala Manifest Design American Exceptionalism and

Empire (1048625104863310486321048629 reprint Ithaca NY Cornell Univ Press 1048626104862410486241048627) 10486291048629ndash104862510486271048625as well as the fascinating case study of artisan radical George Wilkesin Alexander Saxton Rise and Fall of the White Republic Class Politics

and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London Verso 1048626104862410486241048627)104862610486241048629ndash10486261048630

10486271048626 Lyrics from the popular song ldquoThe Leg I Left behind Merdquo originally pub-lished in Jacob Oswandel Notes of the Mexican War 983089983096983092983094ndash983089983096983092983095ndash983089983096983092983096 (Philadelphia np 1048625104863210486321048629) cited in Alemaacuten ldquoEthnic in the Canonrdquo 104862510486311048624ndash10486311048625

10486271048627 George C Furber The Twelve Months Volunteer Or Journal of a Private

in the Tennessee Regiment of Cavalry in the Campaign in Mexico 983089983096983092983094ndash983092983095 (Cincinnati Ohio James 1048625104863210486291048631) 104863010486241048625

10486271048628 George Ballantine Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United

States Army (New York Stringer and Townsend 1048625104863210486291048627) 104862510486331048631 Coinciden-

tally before joining the military Ballantine nearly goes a-whaling refer-ring to his desire to see ldquosome of those scenes of enchantment of whichthe inimitable Herman Melville has given such charming and graphicaldescriptions in his Typee and Omoordquo (10486251048625)

10486271048629 I borrow this phrase from Bruce Robbins The Servantrsquos Hand English

Fiction from Below (Durham NC Duke Univ Press 1048625104863310486331048627) ix10486271048630 George W Stratton Siege of Mexico Or The Confrere of Mechanics A

Melo-drama in Three Acts (founded on the Mexican War) (Milwaukee Wisc np 1048625104863210486291048624) 1048629 10486271048633

10486271048631 See Melvillersquos ldquoAuthentic Anecdotes of Old Zackrdquo in ldquoPiazza Talesrdquo edHayford MacDougall and Tanselle 104862610486251048626ndash10486261048633 See also Luther Stearns




Mansfield ldquoMelvillersquos Comic Articles on Zachary Taylorrdquo American Lit-

erature 1048633 (January 1048625104863310486271048632) 104862810486251048625ndash1048625104863210486271048632 One of the ironies of this letter is that Melville wrote it after Gansevoort

had died in London on 10486251048626 May 1048625104863210486281048630 one day after the declaration of war

by the US Congress (see Correspondence ed Horth 10486271048633)10486271048633 Herman Melville Mardi And a Voyage Thither (1048625104863210486281048633 reprint New York

Rowman and Littlefield 1048625104863310486311048627) 10486281048627104863010486281048624 See Harrison Temple and the Forum ixndash1048628104863010486281048625 Bluford Adams relates that ldquocross-class encounters were common both

at the Broadway and Ann Street Museum and at Barnumrsquos secondMuseum at 104862910486271048633 and 104862910486281048625 Broadway In decades that saw New Yorkrsquos neigh-borhoodsmdashand the amusements that catered to themmdashsplinter alonglines of class and ethnicity everybody went to Barnumrsquosrdquo ( E Pluribus

Barnum The Great Showman and the Making of US Popular Culture [Minneapolis Univ of Minnesota Press 1048626104862410486241048631] 10486311048629ndash10486311048630)10486281048626 Harrison Temple and the Forum 10486251048624104862910486281048627 See Adams E Pluribus Barnum 10486251048626104862410486281048628 As Diana Taylor points out museums are both places and practices ( The

Archive and the Repertoire Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas [Durham NC Duke Univ Press 1048626104862410486241048627] 10486301048627)

10486281048629 See Adams E Pluribus Barnum 1048632104862710486281048630 Shelley Streeby American Sensations Class Empire and the Production

of Popular Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles Univ of California Press1048626104862410486241048626) 1048629

10486281048631 William Knight Northall writes ldquoWe never had the smallest confidencein Santa Annarsquos wooden leg and always thought it was about the lamestaffair [Barnum] ever undertook to palm off upon the publicrdquo ( Before and

behind the Curtain or Fifteen Yearsrsquo Observations among the Theatres of

New York [New York W F Burgess 1048625104863210486291048625] 104862510486301048626)10486281048632 This is likely but not certain As a result of the fire that consumed that

museum in 1048625104863210486301048624 most of the exhibitionary apparatus was lost10486281048633 Neil Harris Humbug The Art of P T Barnum (Chicago Univ of Chicago

Press 1048625104863310486321048625) 1048629104863110486291048624 Adams E Pluribus Barnum 10486321048627 1048632104862910486291048625 Melville ldquoView of the Barnum Propertyrdquo 10486281048628104863210486291048626 Ibid10486291048627 Jacques Derrida ldquoThe Law of Genrerdquo trans Avital Ronell Critical

Inquiry 1048631 (autumn 1048625104863310486321048624) 10486291048629ndash10486321048625 For a concise formulation of invagina-tion see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ldquoLove Me Love My Ombre Ellerdquo Diacritics 10486251048628 (winter 1048625104863310486321048628) 10486261048624ndash10486261048625

10486291048628 See Streeby American Sensations 10486301048633ndash10486311048629

10486291048629 Hugh Haralson Congressional Globe 10486261048633th Cong 1048625st sess 1048625104863210486281048630 10486311048633104862710486291048630 Lewis Cass argued ldquoA Mexican army is upon our soil Are we to confine




our efforts to repelling them Are we to drive them to the border andthen stop our pursuit and allow them to find refuge in their own terri-tory And what then To collect again to cross our frontier at some otherpoint and again to renew the same scenes The advantage would be

altogether on the side of the Mexicans while the loss would be altogetherours I am for making the defense effectual by not only driving off theenemy but by following them into their own territory and by dictating apeace even in the capital if it be necessaryrdquo ( Congressional Globe 10486261048633thCong 1048625st sess 1048625104863210486281048630 104863110486331048633)

10486291048631 Frederick Jackson Turner The Frontier in American History (New YorkHenry Holt 1048625104863310486261048624) 1048626

10486291048632 Thomas Paine The American Crisis 1048628 10486251048626 September 1048625104863110486311048631 (PhiladelphiaStyner and Cist 1048625104863110486311048631) epigraph for George Lippard Legends of Mexico

(Philadelphia T B Peterson 1048625104863210486281048631) title page10486291048633 Ian McGuire ldquolsquoWho ainrsquot a slaversquo Moby-Dick and the Ideology of FreeLaborrdquo Journal of American Studies 10486271048631 (August 1048626104862410486241048627) 104862610486331048627

10486301048624 It should be noted that whalers in general appear to be opposed to USimperialism in Mexico The primary expressive mode of whalersmdashthe shantymdashindicates a stiff resistance to US territorial imperialismShanties rewrote the history of the imperial encounter in favor of MexicoIn ldquoWalk Me Along Johnnyrdquo sailors sang ldquoOh General Taylor died longago Hersquos gone me boys where the winds donrsquot blow He died on thefields of olrsquo Monterry Anrsquo Santiana he gained the dayrdquo ldquoSantianardquo con-tains a similar rewriting of history with the addition that Santa Annais figured as a whaler who dies on board a ship ldquoOh Santiana now wemourn We left him buried off Cape Hornrdquo Stan Hugill claims that manyBritish seamen left their boats to fight on the side of the Mexicans duringthe war perhaps providing discursive material for these ballads Theseshanties were explosively popular When the last US whaler was decom-missioned in the early twentieth century ldquoSantianardquo was the final shantysung That this history of resistance is entirely absent is significantInstead Ishmael declares ldquoLet America add Mexico to Texasrdquo ( MD 10486311048624)

Melville is not providing a real-historical response to the Mexican Warrather he is using the ship as an analytical unit in order to investigate theprocess of hegemony formation See Stan Hugill Shanties from the Seven

Seas Shipboard Work-Songs and Songs Used as Work-Songs from the Great

Days of Sail (London Routledge 1048625104863310486321048624) 10486311048624ndash1048632104863110486301048625 Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon in Surveys from

Exile Political Writings Volume 983090 ed David Fernbach (New York Vin-tage 1048625104863310486311048628) 104862610486271048633

10486301048626 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London Verso 1048626104862410486241048625) xiii10486301048627 Ibid xi




10486301048628 Leslie Katz ldquoFlesh of His Flesh Amputation in Moby-Dick and S WMitchellrsquos Medical Papersrdquo Genders 1048628 (March 1048625104863310486321048633) 1048626

10486301048629 Harrison Temple and the Forum 10486251048624104862910486301048630 Neil L Tolchin Mourning Gender and Creativity in the Art of Herman

Melville (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1048625104863310486321048632) 10486251048627104862510486301048631 Unskilled whalers averaged 983076104863010486261048624 per month in 1048625104863210486281048629 983076104863310486281048627 in 1048625104863210486281048632 and

983076104863310486321048629 in 1048625104863210486291048625 Captains averaged 9830761048630104863010486301048626 98307610486251048624104863010486241048633 and 98307610486251048625104863310486331048627 per monthfor those same years See Lance E Davis Robert E Gallman and KarinGleiter In Pursuit of Leviathan Technology Institutions Productivity

and Profits in American Whaling 983089983096983089983094ndash983089983097983088983094 (Chicago Univ of ChicagoPress 1048625104863310486331048631) 104862510486311048630

10486301048632 The Conquest of Mexico An Appeal to the Citizens of the United States on

the Justice and Expediency of the Conquest of Mexico with Historical and

Descriptive Information Respecting That Country (Boston Jordan and Wiley 1048625104863210486281048630) 1048625104862910486301048633 Ibid 1048625104863010486311048624 See Clayton Charles Kohl Claims as a Cause of the Mexican War (New

York New York Univ Press 1048625104863310486251048628) Although the scholarship is obviouslydated it usefully and exhaustively tracks a deep history of claims andcounterclaims between Mexico and the United States

10486311048625 James Duban ldquolsquoA Pantomime of Actionrsquo Starbuck and American WhigDissidencerdquo New England Quarterly 10486291048629 (September 1048625104863310486321048626) 104862810486271048626ndash10486271048633

10486311048626 Economistic arguments against the war were abundant Theodore Parkerargued that the Mexican War resulted in a massive withdrawal of workersfrom the countryrsquos labor supply ldquoThe indirect pecuniary cost of the waris caused first by diverting some 104862510486291048624104862410486241048624 men from the works of pro-ductive industry to the labors of war which produce nothing Thewithdrawal of such an amount of labor from the common industry of thecountry must be seriously feltrdquo ( A Sermon of the Mexican War [Boston1048625104863210486281048632] 10486251048627) Similarly Abiel Abbot Livermore claimed that ldquothe energiesof many thousand men in both countries ha[d] been diverted from indus-trial and productive occupationsrdquo ( The War with Mexico Reviewed [Bos-

ton American Peace Society 1048625104863210486291048624] 10486321048632)




context in which the Pequod rsquos tragedy unfolds Starbuckrsquos fecklessattempt to disenchant the whalemdasha ldquolsquodumb thingrsquordquo he claimsmdashlacksthe affective and symbolic power of Ahabrsquos figuring of that ldquolsquoinscru-

table thingrsquordquo ( MD 104862510486311048632) Although the position Starbuck takes is unvi-able the antinomy he establishes calls attention to the process and thepolitics by which things are deliteralized and figured If the material isalways already metaphoric if the literal is always becoming literarywhat are the politics of this process What are the effects and affectsof deliteralization Freedgood advocates examining the literary thing ldquoin terms of itsown properties and history and then refigur[ing it] alongside andathwart the novelrsquos manifest or dominant narrativerdquo983094 Yet to follow

the literal history of Santa Annarsquos prosthesis is to track the constantldquolossrdquo as Freedgood would say of its ldquospecific qualitiesrdquo and of its lit-eral referent983095 The prosthetic thing appears in the archive as alreadydetermined by the narrative demands of empire the figures of empirefill the gap left by the loss of the literal Through the representationalpractices of people like Barnum the generalrsquos leg far from indexinghis loss figured the triumphs of empire building It is this process ofimperial metaphorizationmdasha subtraction by addition where the literal

is lost by supplementing it with the prosthesis of figurative meaningmdashthat Moby-Dick engages983096 As ldquoThe Quarter-deckrdquo chapter suggeststhe surplus of the symbol is never simply an enchanted thing but acommunity that participates in and maintains the thingrsquos figurativepower Moby-Dick I argue inscribes the process of deliteralizationand figuration to which Santa Annarsquos prosthesis was subject attendingto the power of things to produce and subordinate what he will call onthe outbreak of the war the ldquodemocratic rabblerdquo983097 Melvillersquos attention

to the figurative work by which this material thing socially matterednecessitates rethinking the relationship between the text and the his-tory with which it engages Michael Paul Rogin proposes that Moby-

Dick is irreducible to political-historical allegory insofar as Ahab him-self renders allegorization an immanent aspect of the novel983089983088 Otherscholars refusing the grandeur of the allegorical have uneartheddizzying and significant correspondences between the text and its con-text Given the geographic and referential promiscuity of Moby-Dickits context can extend endlessly as evidenced by the important work ofrecent transnationally oriented scholarship that centers the Pequod rsquosnarrative in Japan the Pacific Latin America South Asia and so on983089983089



















































































































Barnum on Board














































































Notes

















































































































































































































































Barnum on Board














































































Notes






































































































































































































Notes































































































































taylor-limbs of empire

Documents