L'esprit des échanges : les signes économiques et la foi dans l'oeuvre d'Herman Melville
Institution:
Paris 7Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Rebours de l'evangile de lar richesse, melville met en lumiere l'experience de la depossession. Alors que triomphe le messianisme nationaliste, il devoile les deviations de la "destinee manifeste" et les captations illegitimes de l'heritage religieux. Il demasque la volonte de puissance qui opere sous le voile de la foi partagee. Or, paradoxalement, le monde despiritualise du marche pourrait etre malgre ces travestissements de la foi le theatre d'une revelation ambigue dans la mesure ou le destin christique du depuillement semble s'y rejouer. Mais en derniere instance, on ne saurait departager la foi de la falsification.
Abstract FR:
Melville's narratives run counter to the gospel of wealth as they highlight a basic experience of dispossession. Whereas the young nation invests itself witha messianic mission, melville discloses the deviations from "manifest destiny" and the appropriation of the religious legacy by would be prophets. He unmasks posessive individualism under the guise of faith and confidence. And yet, paradoxically enough, the debased world of the market place might be the seene of an ambiguous revelation in spite of the religious masquerade in the sense that the christic experience of deprivation seems to be re-enacted by the social players against their will. But, in the last resort, it turns out to be impossible to distinguish genuine faith from counterfeiting.