Vom Sprechen der Wale. Die Stimme des Körpers im Wandel

Texts that refer to each other form a shared space of memory. Since Melville’s Moby Dick, the whale’s body has been the place of access to and withdrawal from the whale’s body. The voice of the whale plays a special role in making this access and retreat tangible in literature. In the following article, the body of the whale and its (de)construction will be examined using the voice of the whale. To this end, the voice of the whale is placed at the center of the analysis. A narratological determination of the social (literary) space in which humans and animals are placed in relation to each other results from the fact that the whale has its own voice and how it sounds, which experiences it refers to and to whom it is addressed. How different this whale’s voice and thus also the social human-animal relationship is, is illustrated in the intertextual reference to the Moby-Dick ark text in two books for young people.