Moby Dick

Thucydides’ History of The Peloponnesian War describes the war between Sparta and Athens. While it is often interpreted as a neo-realist political work, i.e., a work which characterizes politics in terms of power relations on an international scale, I’d like to consider the work in a constructivist light. The great city of Athens had lost the war.  Thucydides, according to the constructivist interpretation, had written a work in which the loss of Athens was not only the result of poor planning and bad tactics but also of the manipulation and the eventual of the loss of the meaning of words such as “justice”, and “right”.  Thucydides seemed to believe that these words meant something concrete to the Athenians and that the meanings of these words  had, at one point, corresponded to their actions. But through the manipulation of Athenian leaders, words such as “justice” no longer corresponded with what was just, and “right” in actuality wrong; eventually Athens suffered because there was no stable meaning and thus no corresponding action. This is really oversimplified but basically, with the loss of meaning arises an instability.

I think Ishmael is struggling  with a somewhat similar instability in “The Whiteness of the Whale”. Whiteness has not necessarily lost its meaning, but its understandings are so varied  that it seems to Ishmael as though its meaning can only be found in indefiniteness and instability. It seems to me that what Ishmael really fears about whiteness is its ability to allude definition and categorization. He states, “Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voices and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behinds with the though of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?” (165). Ishmael’s whole project in the book has been to obsessively categorize and define and when he finally confronted with something whose very nature resides in indefiniteness and indefinability he becomes afraid.

Thucydides the Constructivist
Richard Ned Lebow
The American Political Science Review, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 547-560
Published by: American Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3118232

Melville, Herman, Hershel Parker, and Harrison Hayford. Moby-Dick. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS