Arturo Corujo, who was a predoctoral researcher at ADHUC, will defend his doctoral thesis titled ‘This Sailor is Unhoused’: Herman Melville’s Radical Politics of Unbelonging in White-Jacket, supervised by Dr. Rodrigo Andrés (ADHUC-Universitat de Barcelona) and Dr. Isabel González (Universidad de La Laguna). In this project, Corujo rescues White-Jacket (1850) from academic oblivion, arguing that it deals with the problematic notion of belonging, a pervasive theme in Melville. In this novel, a narrator dismantles the equation between identity and private property as he grows increasingly disappointed with essentialist forms of identification based on exclusion and structured around an asphyxiating understanding of the domestic space. Unjustly neglected by critics, Corujo demonstrates that this novel deserves to be acknowledged as a valuable work in itself and as a precursor of Moby-Dick. Drawing on current debates around queer studies, thing theory, queer phenomenology, domestic studies, affect theory, maritime epistemology, and oceanic studies, White-Jacket manifests not only a core theme in Melville, but also a key concern in world literatures: the emancipatory call for a coalition among those who don’t (because they can’t) belong.
