Deconstruction Of The Hierarchies Of Race And Species

America's white supremacism and anthropocentrism in Moby-Dick are reflected in the domination of nonwhites and nonhuman beings as well.Melville projects both racism and speciesism into the whale fishery,thereby exhibiting the depth of his meditation on environmental ethics.The relationship between nature and culture,and the link between natural environment and social environment are due to environmental criticism proposed by the creative American ecological critic Lawrence Buell,which lays a solid theoretic ground for this thesis.This philosophical novel contextualizes the whale fishery against environmental ethics so as to condemn the white supremacists' unethical way to peoples of color and humans' unjust way to nonhuman animals.This thesis explores deconstruction of the hierarchies of race and species in Moby-Dick from the perspective of environmental ethics.Chapter One focuses on fraternal fellowship of whites and nonwhites,with the purpose of diminishing racial distinction.The construction of fellow identity of whites and nonwhites hinges on racial reconciliation and racial democracy.The white Christian Ishmael's unlikely but intimate relationship with the pagan cannibal Queequeg—they are analogous to a couple and twin brothers—implies the prospect that the nonwhite possessing physical strength and moral virtues are gradually admitted and even admired by the white.In addition,the white(Dough-Boy)providing service for nonwhites(the dark-complexioned harpooners)alludes to the status quo where the white man's vulnerability and decadence is in sharp contrast to the noble savage's mightiness and democracy,simultaneously foreshadowing the fact that whites' despotism to the nonwhites begins to disintegrate.Chapter Two expounds the biotic citizenship of both humans and nonhumans,aiming at blurring the species boundary.Human's killing the whale(including livestock)for food(or for other use)embodies the concept of cannibalism,exaggerating and abusing the instrumental value of nonhuman species,in that the human and cetacean(and other nonhuman species)inhabit the earth as equal biotic citizens who deserve the right to life,and nonhuman beings play a parallel role as the human within nature as a whole.Moreover,the specific description of the whale herd in the novel humanizes the cetacean species,highlighting cetacean-human kinship by the means of specifying the anthropomorphic features of the whale in the respects of physique and emotion.The analogy between the whale and the human contributes to the assertion that cetacean and human alike are sentient beings capable of experiencing suffering and enjoyment so as to affirm the intrinsic value of nonhuman beings.Chapter Three seeks to provide some guidelines for navigating Melville's outlook of a biocentric community,with the view of negating anthropocentric ethics which dominated America in the antebellum industrial capitalistic period.Ishmael,as the mediator,bridging the gap between whites and nonwhites,establishes intraspecific egality;likewise,Moby-Dick,as the arbitrator between humans and nonhumans,attributing the intrinsic value to nonhuman species,establishes interspecific egality.The novel,through the two survivors,ends up looking forward to a biocentric-ethic-oriented community,which sheds light on the decline of an ideology of human superiority along with white supremacism,foreseeing the rise of environmental awareness.In the final analysis,environmental ethics in Moby-Dick is threeford:white-nonwhite relations(a),human-nonhuman relations(b),and the relationship between(a)and(b).Humans expand their domination from the underprivileged colored population to the nonhuman domain,and vice versa;humans duplicate their mistreatment to animals,livestock for example,to the dark-skinned people.From the perspective of environmental philosophy,nonwhites and nonhuman beings are of homogeneity due to the historical fact that they both fall victim to social evolution and to the cognition of environmentality.Moby-Dick attempts to break down the hierarchies of races and species,serving presumably as a prophecy of the Civil War and The Origin of Species.