Hieroglyphic, Oral, and Performative: (Re)Evaluating Resistance to Colonialism in the Works of Melville

Abstract

Herman Melville’s legacy in nineteenth-century American literary studies remains prolific. Recent scholarly inquiry, such as those by Christopher Freeburg, Geoffrey Sanborn, and Birgit Brander Rasmussen, critically read key texts of Melville for their unique depictions of Polynesian and African cultures. In this paper I focus on the depictions of oral and performative literacy by those African and Polynesia cultures in three key texts by Melville—Typee (1846), Moby-Dick (1851), and “Benito Cereno” (1855). By focusing on his depictions of non-alphabetic literacies, I revisit Melville’s engagements with colonialism, evaluating their efficacy and limitations. Tommo’s refusal of the Typee facial tattoo, Ishmael’s fear of Queequeg during the Monkey Rope scene, and Amasa Delano’s inability to understand the revolt aboard the San Dominick show a continuum of Melville’s anti-colonialism, opening discussions of what it means to read the Other. In examining the ways white colonialist characters presume their right to learn and to take the knowledge from those non-Western literacies they cannot read, we can probe what including non-Western literacies in academic studies means for the future of the field – interdisciplinary efforts between literary studies and non-Western areas of study that best preserve, maintain, and engage the texts of non-anglophone cultures