The Sounds of Cetacean Revolution Through History

Abstract

This article examines rogue whale encounters in seventeenth-century English poet Edmund Waller’s “The Battle of the Summer Isles” (1645), a poem that seeks to establish human dominion through an epic struggle between settlers attempting landfall on the Bermudian shore and a pod of sperm whales who prevent such actions. Through the poem’s use of sound, in particular the whales’ cries for justice, I find resonance with the concept of nonhuman revolutions we see actualized through the whales and orcas of today. This article traces a cultural history of whale resistance by and through sound. Part 1 recalls historical whale resistance narratives to establish prevalence for what we now term “orcanization.” I briefly show how three particular whales have disrupted narratives of cetacean kindness or friendship, choosing anti-human violence despite their capacity for kindness: White Gladis of yacht-sinking fame, the notorious Tilikum of Blackfish (2013), and Mocha Dick, the sperm whale that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). Part 2 explores how Waller’s whales represent a narrative of roguish animal revolution: of whales that, in their courage, disruption, and refusal to die, muddle the Empire’s myth of New World domination. In conclusion, I assert that in the sound of orcas breaking rudders today we can hear a history of whale narratives: examples of resistance, calls for reparation, and a reminder that this world is a shared one