De Shark Well Goberned: Animal Asceticism Aboard the Pequod

I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason -- as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal.

Friedrich Nietszche, The Gay Science

 

Vernes' cuttlefish, Hugo's octopus, and Melville's squid can hardly be considered animals, any more than Moby Dick himself can be held to participate in the discursive life of sperm whales.  Many studies have tried to parse out what would now be called the dimensions of "animality" in Moby Dick, which generally take the White Whale as their starting point, e.g. Harold Aspiz' "Phrenologizing the Whale" (Aspiz, 1968).  However, since all but the most recent predate Bremselhacker et al.'s insight into the ubiquity of polybrachial symbology (or, more often, its deliberate exclusion), they are in general to be considered as outmoded and, not to put too fine a point on it, as quaint as phrenology itself.

 

This is not meant to trivialize the animal in Moby Dick, which is undeniably ubiquitous and polyvalent; merely to re-situate it in an order subordinate to the discourse of the polybrachial Other. Man and animals are asymmetrically related to one another, but it is a condition of possibility for the Western subject that both stand in solidarity with their backs to the writhing, spectral tentacular:

 

It is with this in mind that I want to undertake an examination of the celebrated "Sermon to the Sharks," which occurs very shortly after the irruption of the chthonic, amorphous polybrachiousia, and which is quoted in full below.  This episode occurs immediately after the crew of the Pequod succeed in making their first kill.  The mate who harpooned the whale, Stubb, has caused a steak to be cut from its tail for his immediate consumption, but the Pequod's African cook has not prepared it to his specifications:

 

    "Cook, cook! - where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook! - sail this way, cook!"

    The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously routed from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.

    "Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to 'em!"
    Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.
    "Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise dare. you hear? stop dat dam smackin' ob de lip! massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!"
    "Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap on the shoulder, - "Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, Cook!"
    "Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.
    "No, Cook; go on, go on."
    "Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters: - "
    "Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it; try that," and Fleece continued.
    "Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness - 'top dat dam slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slappin' and bitin' dare?"
    "Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk to 'em gentlemanly."
    Once more the sermon proceeded.
    "Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de bigness ob de mout is not to swallar wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves."
    "Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."
    "No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scrougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a- preachin' to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get em full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can't hear not'ing at all, no more, for eber and eber."
    "Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."
    Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried -
    "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam' bellies 'till dey bust - and den die."

 

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, p. 304 (California Edition)

 

This episode enacts a twofold denoument from the irruption of the polybrachial Other which was analyzed in the preceding post: First, Stubb's obstreporous voracity for the whale's flesh reveals that it is this whale, the ordinary, dusky whale, which can stand for the fulfillment of all human desire; the Other one, so often assigned this role in pre-polybrachial studies, clearly cannot occupy it since it is, at the most basic level, commensurate with the nefandous lim(b)inal.  Second, Stubb's engagement with the congregation of sharks through his proxy minister, Fleece, opens a field of differentiation whose articulation, as above, requires the elision of the multimembrous horror as a condition of its possibility; for in the presence of the Überbeinig these relations dissolve into homogeneity

 

It is, then, in the space defined by the absence of the polybrachial (which, significantly, is here inhabited only by man and two varieties of creature who both have, in generous estimation, only two limbs,) that we can begin to understand the nature of animality in Moby Dick.

 

Fleece hails the sharks here in two parallel capacities, both qua African: as Natural man, he engages the sharks as a human/animal intermediary; but more importantly, as Slave, he engages them as potential slaves.  Stubb's project here is to foment a slave revolt in morals among the seething frenzy.  His minion Fleece, faitfhul interpellant of Judaeo-Christian slave morality, identifies the sharks with their allegedly "woracious natur" and addresses them precisely "to demand from strength that it does not express itself as strength, that it does not consist of a will to overpower, a will to throw down, a will to rule, a thirst for enemies and opposition and triumph," (Genealogy of Morals, Essay I, §13).  Stubb's motive in kindling a world-denying ressentiment in the sharks is, presumably, to fund his own carnal, sybaritic compulsions.  We have moved beyond the eagle and the lamb, and now find the master turning the tables once again, cunningly donning the guise of an agitator for slave morality in order to disarm the ostensibly bestial, "noble" sharks and thus eliminate competitors who threaten to obviate the satisfaction of his willful lusts.  This reading derives plausibility not only from its elegance, but also from Melville's extensive correspondence with the young Nietzche, much of which survives. (Happily, a volume of previously unpublished letters is scheduled for release by the University of California at Santa Cruz Press in 2011, edited by Twinglebrook-Hastings, under the provisional title Dispatches from Customs Post A1902 ).

 

However, while this reading is certainly not baseless, it does not constitute a sufficient explanation of the "Sermon."  Geoffery Galt Harpham's reverberating claim, first articulated in Vita Animālium: the ascetic imperative in natural history that "asceticism is the animal component of animality" is a propos here.  The reading outlined above depends on the accuracy of Fleece's claim that, "you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious."  Far from being clearly the case, this formulation appears, in the world of post-Vita animality studies, to be a direct inversion of the real situation.  If, as Harpham writes, "the animal ascetic pays constant fealty to the logic of perspectivism in its ceaseless and disciplined exploration of the limit of possible configurations of itself; in other words, the animal is always already ascetic [emphasis in original]," then Fleece is confusing "natur" and asceticism from the start, since the deeds he identifies as indicative of "woraciousness" are, in fact, the constitutive practices of a developed askesis.

 

If Stubb's fellow diners would rather be basking in alpine meadows, feeding one another nasturtiums and sipping jasmine tea from dainty porcelain cups, how are we to interpret his attempted intervention in the moralizing of the sharks?  Stubb believes that he is using Fleece to entrain the sharks to an asceticism which is useful (i.e., "good") for him.  However, he subverts his own aim since in fact he is asking them to decline from their life-affirming asceticism to a baser mode of existence, which is presented ("that's Christianity!") as being more human. And perhaps it is...all too human, since in this new order we see man situated at the wrong end of the continuum of ascetic self-realization.  The sharks occupy a position beyond the logic of master/slave morality; they have (always already) attained the deep, cunning, self-aware, and life-affirming asceticism of the Überhaifische.  Stubb's failed attempt to authorize his own blond beastliness through cynically agitating a slave-revolt in shark-morals can be resolved, then, as a step backwards, not forwards.  Perhaps Nietszche had this passage in mind when he wrote:

Man is by no means the crown of creation: every living being stands beside him on the same level of perfection. And even this is saying too much: relatively speaking, man is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. (The Anti-Christ, 14)

The animal in Moby Dick must be distinguished from the discourse of the res multibrachia, which while it trades in animal metaphors has nothing to do with animality.  Only when this separation is achieved can substantive analysis of Melville's animality begin.  When it is undertaken on this basis, it becomes clear that Moby Dick is invested with a sophisticated critique of animal asceticism and its human counterpart which departs from predictable lines of argument and has disturbing implications for man's situation as an agent of moral self-realization vis-a-vis, in this instance, sharks.  Whether this critique is the conscious articulation of Melville's correspondence with Nietszche remains to be established.

Post Script

 

As this essay went to press, I received an interesting news cutting from a friend, detailing a spontaneous encounter between an Australian conservationists and a group of tiger sharks who were, as luck would have it, feeding on a dead whale.  I do not wish to suggest by sharing it here that any of the reflections above constitute a vulgar empiricism which simply awaits confirmation by experiment and observation; however, to leave out a recently documented scene of ascetic restraint in sharks would be remiss.

-H.B., New Bedford, 2010