A Table of Prohibited Degrees: The Appetites and Affinities of Robinson Crusoe

Contrary to Jacques Derrida's contention that the creation of the wheel signals Crusoe's imagined mastery over his environment and thus marks the major turning point in Defoe's novel, this article suggests that the table represents the central locus of symbolic power in Robinson Crusoe. After securing a safe dwelling space, Crusoe first and foremost builds what he calls his "necessary things"—namely, a table and chair—for he "could not write, or eat, or do several things with so much pleasure without a table." By singling out writing and eating, two activities long associated with traditional humanist beliefs and attitudes, Crusoe indicates that his table will exist as an assurance of his humanity within an otherwise "wild" context. This article traces the concomitant construction and deconstruction of that table, which though embodying humanism on the island, eventually becomes the principal site of alterity and difference. Indeed, shortly after finishing the project, Crusoe invites not only animals to join him at the table, but also Catholics, non-Christians, and, yet more remarkably, cannibals. For Defoe the Dissenter and Crusoe the deserted, the table becomes a space in which the novel can reconsider, in proto-posthumanist fashion, the religious, humanist, and dietary discourses of its day.