Anti-Companionship and the White Whale: A Failed Recognition

Abstract: This article proposes a reinterpretation of the antagonistic relationship between Captain Ahab and the object of his obsession, Moby Dick, and adversarial otherness that ends in a destructive mutual recognition. The development of the article was made possible by employing three theoretical frameworks that facilitated a more detailed explanation for how this dynamic is not only fueled by obsession, but also by a refusal to admit the possibility of a dialogic connection with something that can hardly be understood. The first part was dedicated to Emannuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy that revolves around the idea of the face and how the whale’s physical presence openly demands that Ahab recognize the Other as being something outside his control, a demand that was, without a doubt, refused, the consequences materializing as retaliation from the whale. The second part focused on Donna Haraway’s theory of companion species which is deliberately inverted in order to allow for a description of Ahab and Moby Dick’s relationship as being transformative but, instead, it becomes mutually destructive, connecting two parties of different species to a common end. Finally, the third part focused on Aristotle’s tragic anagnorisis, the hero’s transition from ignorance to absolute knowledge, but with a little twist: the captain’s recognition is a perversion of this classical idea because he does see something more powerful than his own will, but he consciously chooses to defy it than learn about the very thing that has limited him from the very beginning. The close reading of Herman Melville’s most popular novel and the forementioned theories allowed for a new lens for understanding the tragedy of the American will which rests on the idea that if other does not submit, then it is not a companion.