A Harbinger Of A New World

Herman Melville(1819-1891)is one of the greatest writers in America.His masterpiece Moby-Dick narrates the story of the whole crew of a whaling ship travelling around the world for whales.The novel portrays the transnational experiences of various sailors from all over the world.The thesis examines Moby-Dick from the perspective of transnationalism Transnationalism represents a topic of rapidly growing interest witnessed in academia and it has become a useful and widely-applied tool to offer new insights in various fields such as sociology,politics and literature.In the relations across state boundaries,transnationalism tries to transcend the boundary of nation-state and focuses on various flows and connections Drawing on the transnational theories of Thomas Faist,Steven Vertovec,Alejandro Portes,among other scholars,and the theoretical recapitulation of Ding Yueya,this thesis discusses the transnational practices,transnational social space and transnational identity in Moby-Dick,exposes various forms of binary oppositions at that time and further deconstructs these oppositions in the novel to show that Melville predicted the future of the world:transnationalism.Apart from introduction and conclusion,this thesis consists of three chapters.In the introduction,Melville's writing career and the literature review of Moby-Dick are presented The first chapter expounds the origin of transnationalism,its definition and three core concepts:transnational practices,transnational social space and transnational identity.The second chapter examines the historical background of the novel:by that time,transnational migration wave had already begun and the United States had become the destination of transnational practices;capitalism emerged rapidly with the help of industrialization and the development of technology;and cities offered the concrete settings for transnational practices.The third chapter exposes and deconstructs four types of binary oppositions in the novel from the perspective of transnationalism:the geographic opposition between the home country and the host country;the racial opposition between the white people and the colored migrants;the economic opposition between the home country and the host country;and the cultural opposition between cultures of America and those of migrants.The conclusion of this thesis argues that Moby-Dick subverts traditional binary oppositions in transnational practices and blurs their boundaries.Migrants no longer settle in a single place permanently or have to choose a single identity;instead,their residences are in a constant change and their identities can be multiple and dynamic,sharing characteristics of both the home country and the host country.Although in a certain degree,the author of the novel fails to realize his own prejudice sometimes due to his own "white American" identity,he still observes the trend of the time subtly--transnatioanlism,and suggests that cooperation between civilizations will be the ethos of the future human world.