| Titre | Propriété et possession dans le chapitre 89, « Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish » de Moby-Dick | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Agnès Derail | |
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Revue | Revue française d'études américaines |
| Numéro | no 160, 3ème trimestre 2019 L'Amérique à la loupe : Poétique et politique du détail | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | 1. Du singulier à l'exemplaire : le détail structurant |
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| Page | 10-24 | |
| Résumé anglais |
In the cetological chapter 89 of Moby-Dick, Ishmael launches into a jocular disquisition about maritime laws aimed at settling litigations between ships claiming possession of the same whale. Dubbed “Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish”, the law under scrutiny is ostensibly extolled as the peaceful means to solve all whaling disputes. Yet, what emerges from the cases cited is that the law invariably grants the entire ownership of a contested prey to the party who last got hold of it. The judicial construct of property, Ishmael cannot but admit, amounts to legitimizing the right of the strongest: the idea that “possession is the whole of the law” ultimately extends to all human jurisprudence, justifying worldwide systems of exploitation. Such seems to be Ishmael's orthodox indictment of the law as a mere instrument of power. However, the question of legal property ties in with the motif of self-ownership, crucial in the novel, notably via Ahab's memorable claims to self-sovereignty but also via the more subdued issue of slavery. This article interrogates the implicit alignment of the law of property with the ontological issue of self-ownership, which wryly tends to exculpate human legal construct on the ground that it would merely emanate from a metaphysical law of generalized predation and appropriation—which also applies to literature, and most notoriously to Melville's Moby-Dick, as a summa of plagiarized archives. Source : Éditeur (via Cairn.info) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_160_0010 (accès réservé) |
