ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cultural studies is so ubiquitous that it is virtually invisible as a category. There are two ways of construing the problem posed by the chapter: a narrow one that inquires about institutional practice, and a broader one that inquires about persons and their politics. The 'Try-Works' is the place on board ship where they boil down bits of whale. It is often been taken as a thinly veiled allegory for the novel itself, and the process of novel writing. The chapter provides that it has been singled out by many critics of varying critical persuasions as central to the novel as indeed what one called 'a kind of synecdoche of the symbolic meaning of Moby-Dick'. It explores when the two try-pots are not in use rendering the blubber into fuel, some cynical old sailors crawl inside and 'coil themselves away there for a nap'.
