The PhD candidate Laura López Peña, pre-doctoral research fellow at the Centre Dona i Literatura - Gènere, sexualitats, crítica de la cultura, will defend her doctoral thesis, directed by Rodrigo Andrés and titled "Beyond the Walls—Potentiality Aborted. The Politics of Intersubjective Universalism in Herman Melville's Clarel". The dissertation analyzes the political project in writer Herman Melville's oeuvre through the narrative poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). Based on an analyses of community, interpersonal relationships, global ethics and universalism by such contemporary theorists as Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Nancy, among others, the study argues that Clarel articulates intersubjective universalism, a political project created through intersubjectivity. This project is divided between the democratizing potentiality that the author places upon interpersonal relationships and the sad realization that human beings may never bring such potentiality to fruition. The dissertation investigates how Clarel exposes the necessity, possibilities and difficulties of intersubjectivity in the development of more democratic human relationships, beyond the walls of individualism and traditional communities that are rooted in notions such as the nation-state, race, culture, religious affiliation, or sexual identity.
