Melville's Ghosts

This essay, a substantial revision of the plenary I delivered at the Melville Society Conference in June of 2025, argues that Melville's use of haunting allows for a more elastic analysis of his treatment of revolution, one that encompasses both its possibilities and its failures. Using Derrida's concept of hauntology as my launching point I argue that Melville's use of various specters constitutes an indictment of the failure of revolution to perform its office, but this does not necessarily indicate an anti-revolutionary stance as C.L.R. James writes in Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In . Rather, these hauntings act as insistent reminders of the stakes of continuing to demand more from the rhetoric of revolution. In my analysis of Pip's madness, I analyze Pip's retreat into the figure of Jim Crow as a grotesque form of resistance.