Post-Human Automata, Ontology, and Agency in Moby-Dick
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2022
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Bryn Mawr College. Department of English
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This thesis conducts "post-human" readings of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, searching for interactions between humans, animals, and machines that result in fundamental and often mutual changes to their modes of existence. It analyzes these interactions through a machine-like lens of "automata," emphasizing the hidden forms of agency exhibited by traditionally disempowered, non-human subjects, especially whales. Because the characters of Moby-Dick each occupy distinct roles within multiple social, economic, and physiological power structures, this post-human repositioning leads to an array of unique "assemblages" of human and non-human bodies and ontologies. These emergent collections of entities demonstrate both individual and group agency and purpose ("telos"), informing our understanding of the novel's descriptions, characterizations, and narrative developments accordingly