What Does Melville See on the Ocean?

The article begins with a brief discussion of what the author judges to be an overproduction of publications in literary studies. He offers an explanation of this development and contends that the causes are endemic to the humanities. Two causes of this overproduction are particularly pertinent for his reading of Melville: firstly, the constant change of interpretative paradigms and, secondly, the striving of the humanities to reflect upon the contemporary moment. The departure point of the reading is the spatial turn and the author's contention that this geographical knowledge has failed to address the sea. Elaborating on this contention, the author foregrounds the need for a maritime criticism and proceeds to read Moby Dick by excavating the manner in which Melville represents and thinks of the sea. On the basis of this evidence, the author argues that in Moby Dick, Melville offers a meontological thinking of the sea. Consequentially, the author argues that this meontology has a bearing on the present economic crisis and that it can be used in understanding the latest mutation of money. In the conclusion, the author claims that literary studies can make an important contribution to efforts to cope with the challenges of the present moment

Vital Texts and Bare Life: The Uses and Abuses of Life in Contemporary Fiction

The problem of writing life is one that has not dissipated in contemporary literature, if anything it has intensified. Past forms of countertexts turned to the subversive power of life, either with the avant-garde dissolution of text into life or by the modernist merging of life into the text. These forms often deployed a literary vitalism, which claimed a countertextual force through staking a claim on the power of life to overflow textual and political determinations. These currents, however, risk reinforcing forms of literary and capitalist value that draw on the powers of life. Instead, I argue, a different form of countertextuality can be found in contemporary autobiographical or confessional works, which by foregrounding the life of the author render the smooth translation of life into the text problematic. In particular, the work of the contemporary US writer Chris Kraus probes the relation between ‘vital texts’ and the experience of ‘bare life’ – life left exposed to power. Reconstructing her intervention, especially in her novel Summer of Hate [2012], reveals the possibilities of a new countertextual sensibility that turns to subjectivity and life without simply celebrating the expressive powers of life as the ground of literary and cultural value. Instead of a countertext that claims to express the power of life beyond the literary, Kraus develops a countertext in which life is exposed to abstract forms of power and so she allows us to trace the entanglement of life with value