Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

242the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow—becauseArabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrusta Westerner feels towards the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated:what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of theadventurer-pioneer-Orientalist . . ., and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, theArab Oriental. Isolated from everything except the past created for him by Orientalistpolemic, the Arab is chained to a destiny that fixes him and dooms him to a series ofreactions periodically chastised by what Barbara Tuchman gives the theological name“Israel’s terrible swift sword.” (286)The Oriental body becomes the object of desirean object that is designed for Americanconsumers. In fact, the mapping of anti-Semitism onto the Arab is a defense mechanism, aversion of the missed encounter with Otherness as otherness.The constructions of Otherness and difference prevail in Moby-Dick. Melville waspreoccupied with negative aspects of the Orient. His description shows “the eccentricities ofOriental life, with its odd calendars, its exotic special configurations, its hopelessly strangelanguages, its seemingly perverse morality, were reduced considerably when they appeared as aseries of detailed items presented in a normative European prose style (Orientalism 167). Forexample, Melville’s comparison of Queequeg’s paganism to Islamin the chapter entitled “TheRamadan”is reminiscent of medieval propagandist myths about Islam and its depiction, albeitits incomparable monotheism, as a pagan creed. Melville equates Queequeg’s Ramadan with“Humiliation” (94). Likewise, he compares the patriarchal authority and sexual indulgence of themale whale over its females to that of an Ottoman (Muslim) over his “concubines” or haremaword used to refer to Oriental polygamy and sexuality. Melville writes: