NotNormativelyHuman 319
"as a curious object" (11) produces reactions that are bit more pointed.
He is soon subjected to what might well be called a hermeneutics of
suspicion (Ricoeur,Freud and Philosophy 32-34): first the wooden-
leggedman(himselfapurportedlydisabledcharacter),nextthegroupof
passengers solicit "documentary proof, any plain paper about him,
attesting that his case was not a spurious one" (13). In response to this
query, and failing to produce the required paper, the Black Guinea
names a number of people who could assert "dat dis poor old darkie is
werry wordy of all you kind ge'men's kind confidence" (13)—none of
whichcanbefound.ThequestionwhethertheBlackGuineaisafakeor
not is left undecided and, together with the character, dropped in the
narrative.The third character to be identified as disabled, the Soldier of
Fortune, is presented as interacting only with one character, the herb-
doctor,possiblyanavataroftheConfidence-Manhimself.Thesoldieris
one of the few characters in the novel who confesses to some sort of
fraud, faking not his disability perhaps but the story he tells about it:
"Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady,
something for General Scott's soldier, crippled in both pins at glorious
Contreras" (97). This impromptu narrative is heard, not only by the
herb-doctor but also by "a prim-looking stranger" who reacts
predictably, addressing the doctor: "Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder
rascal should lie so?" (97) This gives the doctor the golden opportunity
toprovehisownhumaneconvictionsbyrebukingthestranger:"Dareto
expose that poor unfortunate, and by heaven—don't do it, sir" (98).
Whereupon the stranger retires, and this case is again dropped. One
might argue that here one con man vouchsafes for another, but, once
again, the nature of both of individual disability and disability in the
abstractremainsdubiousintheend.
In the conversational reactions toward the disabled characters which
the narrative records,their disability turns outto be asshape-shifting as
the Confidence-Man himself. In the three principle cases when a
disability identity is at issue, Melville's technique, possibly adopted
from Hawthorne, "of having multiple observers comment on the same
object" (Hoffman 286), has the effect of challenging the status of
perceptibleknowledgeaboutnon-normativeembodimentsandinvesting
them with a spectral quality. In doing so, Confidence-Man de-
essentializes notions of disability, taking them instead into the realm of
whatmightbecalled,inthewordsofJürgenHabermas,"communicative