Melville’s Obsessional Form: Disjunction and Refusal in “Benito Cereno”

“Benito Cereno” offers an exemplary text to consider obsession in relation narrative form. Melville’s tale operates on at least two levels: the first part, a third-person narration that exhausts itself when “Melville’s ultimate dupe” (Ngai 61), Captain Delano, finally realizes there has been slave revolt Cereno’s ship, and second transcripts from legal depositions court case makes sovereign judgment Babo events of preceding narrative. Yet this does little resolve narrative’s tensions. Drawing psychoanalytic theory, I argue for as governing formal principle The necessary yet impossible coincidence multiple levels characterizes compelling way reread representation critique anti-Black fantasies organize society displayed story. perpetual turning motion constitutive obsessional form thus helps redescribe competing styles Cereno,” well aesthetic political implications Babo’s resistance structures Delano world. Reading terms reveals its profound anti-Blackness sustaining it.