/lit/ - Literature

So this my schizo theory on why the infodumpy chapters where nothing happens in Moby Dick are based. Melville, in interrupting the scenic chapters of this story about chasing an anomaly of a whale with pure all purpose whale trivia, sets out to critique Epistemology. Hear me out. So there are general apriori statements about whales offered throughout the book right? This serves to provide a contrast to the unown menace of the white whale himself, the singularity of moby dick which does not fall into neat categories of general and particular, and stands outside of common notions of whales yet simultaneously redefines what it means to be a whale. Moby Dick being the problematic Event, that unifies all pieces of this narrative, grounds the problem of what the Leviathan means to us. What can be known about whales or identities as such? Isn't there always a part submerged under deep waters of mystery? The whales always elude our understanding, identities dive and flee our grasp. There is something prerational in the whale, only Ahab is aware of this. Ishmael is trying to encapsulate the whale in regimes of knowledge yet he himself always finds himself dumbfounded by the complex nature of this historically unfolding idea of the whale and admits into not penetrating to it's essence. For Ahab on the other hand it's not a question of understanding the whale, but rather one of entering into a performance with the whale, of engaging this unown being head-on, outside of preset structures of categorization in a more intuitive sense. God, I love this book now.
Sorry if I sound like a pseud, I read too much Deleuze lol.