“Every time he comes in he robs me”: The Parasitic Chains of Israel Potter’s Exile
Keywords:
Herman Melville, Israel Potter, Parasite, Exile, Body politicAbstract
Along with recent Melvillian scholarship (Irigoyen 2018, Lazo 2022), the present essay analyzes the representation of the exile in Herman Melville’s Israel Potter: or, His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), by focusing on the ways in which the geographical dislocation of American citizens abroad transforms their position within the body politic and the social contract established after the end of the American Revolution. In particular, the present analysis argues that the experience of exile is crucial in generating an imbalance between state and people, turning the mutually beneficial relationship that ties them together into a form of exploitation of the former over the latter. In other words, while the social compact (represented in the body politic) is theoretically configured as a relation of symbiosis between the two entities, the exile experience transforms such a reciprocity into a parasitical tie.
The narrative function of the parasite theorized by scholars such as Michel Serres (1980) and Cynthia Damon (1997) has been applied to Melville’s work by Anders M. Gullestad (2022), who focuses on the parasitical chains related to food. Here, the notion is applied to the dynamics of power and it is used to describe the relationship between the state and the persons in exile, configuring the political institutions as parasite, and the people as host. The essay subverts the relationship between parasite and host, identifying Israel Potter as the host during his life in exile, and the United States and British governments as parasites, thus suggesting Melville’s distrust towards the structures of power of his age. In other words, the present analysis grounds on Melville’s disillusionment towards the political scenario of the time and argues that Israel epitomizes the exploitation performed by the political institutions towards the body politic of the time. Two episodes will be examined: first, Israel’s stay in Paris and his relationship with Benjamin Franklin and, second, Israel’s exile in England.
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