Herman Melville and Neurodiversity, or Why Hunt Difference with Harpoons?: A Primitivist Phenomenology (Explorations in Science and Literature)

Martinez Benedi, Pilar

ISBN 10: 1350360902 / ISBN 13: 9781350360907

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2026

About this Item

2026. paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9781350360907

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Herman Melville and Neurodiversity, or Why Hunt Difference with Harpoons?: A Primitivist Phenomenology (Explorations in Science and Literature)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350360902
• ISBN 13: 9781350360907
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Focusing on the difference between lower-level perceptual processes in the “neural unconscious” and higher-order thought in the frontal lobes, this open access book shows how Herman Melville sought to reclaim the fluid world of the sensory, with its precategorical and radically egalitarian impulses. By studying this previously underexamined facet of Melville’s work, this book offers an essential corrective to the “pathology paradigm,” which demonizes departures from a neurological norm and feasts on pejorative categorization. The neurodiversity movement arose precisely as a response to how so-called “mental disorders” have been described, understood, and treated. Unlike standard neuroscientific or psychiatric investigation, Melville’s work doesn’t strive to explain typical functioning through the negative and, in the process, to shore up a regime of normalcy. To the contrary, it exploits the lack of congealed diagnoses in the 19th Century, much more neutrally asking the question: what can an atypical body-mind do? Steeped in current studies about autism, Alzheimer’s, Capgras and Fregoli syndromes, Mirror-touch synesthesia, phantom limb syndrome, stuttering, and tinnitus, and fully conversant with Melville scholarship, Phenomenological Primitives demonstrates what the humanities can contribute to the sciences and what the sciences can contribute to the humanities. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded in part by Grinnell College.

About the Authors

Pilar Martinez Benedi is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of L'Aquila, Italy.

Ralph James Savarese is Professor of English at Grinnell College, USA.

Lara Choksey is a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, UK.

John Holmes worked in the Foreign Office for 34 years, finishing as Ambassador in Paris, before taking up the role of UN USG for Humanitarian Affairs in 2007.