320 RüdigerKunow
action" (Moral Consciousness116-94). This procedure, very much in
accord with contemporary strategies from inside the disability
community (Berger 9), makes disability less a material than a
communicationalcondition,something interlocutors in a given situation
talk,agree,ordisagreeabout.Thepresenceofdisabilityinthenarrative
as a conversational item or talking point is quite consonant with the
novel's overall emphasis oncommunicative (and not merely verbal)
interaction. The good ship Fidèlemight well be called a "talkative
factory," a term coined by Paolo Virno (qtd. in Picard 146); and one of
theproductsofthisfactoryis"disability."
Against this background, the overall irony highlighted by Melville
seems to be this: while the disabled characters routinely meet with
suspicion, even verbal abuse, the "affirmative position" (Habermas,
Reason and the Rationalization of Society95-97, 297), belief in his
identity claims, is equally routinely granted to the Confidence-Man. In
his various guises, he manages to contain, if not control, the
hermeneuticsofsuspiciontohisadvantage,ashefleecesonedeclaredly
suspicious passenger after the other (15-16,99-100). Among this "flock
of fools, under this captain of fools, in this ship of fools," as another
disabled (!) passenger puts it (15), all identities are ultimately up for
grabs.^147 The combined effect of a narrative highlighting suspicion and
the presence of disabled characters as paradigmatic objects of disbelief
isthatembodiednormativityaswellasitsoppositebecomeshroudedin
afogofindeterminacy,remainspectral.Theobservation,possiblymade
by the Confidence-Man himself, that "you can conclude nothing
absolutefromthehumanform"(199)isthusnotonlyasummaryofthe
series of masquerades on board the allegorical shipFidèlebut may also
be read as a critique of the hermeneutics of suspicion routinely
addressedtopeoplewithnon-normativeembodiments.
These hermeneutics are not only saturated by an ontological
skepticism toward bodies declared as "disabled," but equally also by a
cultural politics of the visible, a product of the joint emergence of a
(^147) Various critics of the novel have noted that this spuriousness points to the
equally spuriouscredentials offiction writing's representing a world outside the
text.Cf.JohnF.Blair:"Ifaconfidencemanoffersappearanceswhoserealityis
equivocal,sodoesfictionandsodoestheuniverseasMelvilleconceivedit..."
(qtd.inBranchetal.343).