“Discipline and Pleasure in Redburn and White-Jacket"
Abstract
This chapter focuses on how sailors' pleasures are limited and regulated by naval discipline— primarily in White-Jacket — before turning to the way they are also produced, disseminated, and multiplied in both Redburn and White-Jacket . Redburn is the story of Wellingborough Redburn , who experiences the harsh realities of life on board a merchant vessel. In White-Jacket , Captain Claret's power relies upon his sovereign good pleasure. The two novels question the categories of good and evil, pleasure and pain on board. In the face of pleasure regulations, Foucault's mechanism— according to which regulations trigger opposition, production, and dissemination of alternative, unlicensed pleasures— unfolds. In the mid-nineteenth century, temperance discourses aimed to check the US population's alcoholic compulsions not only for the sake of the individual citizen, but also for the economic, social, and (bio)political sake of the Republic.