Fathom

Pratt, Susanne; Marambio, Camila; Quigley, Killian; Hamylton, Sarah; Gibbs, Leah Maree; Vergés, Adriana; Adams, Michael; Barcan, Ruth; Neimanis, Astrida

doi:10.1215/22011919-8142264

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In our practice, we use snorkelling equipment to better engage a 'methodology of encounter' as Elspeth Probyn (2016: 82) calls it, as we observe and think with other species, as well as experience the affective and tactile experience of being in/with the sea and its shifting moods. Fins, masks and snorkels are prostheses that become part of our bodies, not experienced as separate, as Karen Barad (2007) notes in their description of a white cane for a non-sighted person or a wheelchair for someone who cannot walk without an apparatus (Pratt et al, 2020). Nike describes the dependence on the snorkel as a life-line, as it allows her to temporarily feel 'acutely part of or one with the environment'.…”

Section: Practices Of Oceanic Swimming-writing-thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild Sea Swimming as a Slow Intimacy: Towards Reconfiguring Scholarship

Bozalek,

Shefer,

Romano

2024

Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics

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Our oceanic swimming-writing-reading together practice coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and subsequent lockdown in South Africa. Awash with vulnerability, precarity, and isolation, oceanic swimming-writing-reading became one of the few ways in which we, as three academics from different higher education institutions, found respite in a practice of care for ourselves and others. Curious as to whether swimming and free writing could materialise alternative creative scholarly practices, we began to meet regularly to swim, write, read and think together with theoretical perspectives that subscribe to a feminist relational ontology. This article turns to visual and written narratives generated during this period and building on them, considers health and wellbeing at both subjective and planetary levels. Our global southern location articulates with these themes in very particular ways – access, risk and embodiment in relation to seas, beaches and littoral zones. South Africa remains haunted by the continuing geopolitical effects of its slave, colonial, apartheid, and neoliberal past and current contexts of global capitalism that seep into encounters with the ocean. Our swimming-writing-thinking is a reminder of our relationalities with and response-abilities for the hydrocommons as the measure of human, other species and the planet’s capacity to survive and flourish.

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Section: Practices Of Oceanic Swimming-writing-thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild Sea Swimming as a Slow Intimacy: Towards Reconfiguring Scholarship

Bozalek,

Shefer,

Romano

2024

Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics

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“…Due to the physical constraints of our human bodies, our access and knowledge of the deep sea is necessarily mediated through technology. As Pratt et al (2020, p. 174) argue, ‘The bottom of the sea emerges at the meeting of our bodies, instruments (for measuring, recording, writing, filming), and the materialities of the benthos’. Similarly, Patricia Yaeger (2010, pp.…”

Section: Remediations: Radical Materialities Of the Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet what sway do a rope and a weight, or even satellite altimetry or synthetic aperture radar, hold against the roaring maw of the eternal sea, whose movement and multispecies wonder elude pretensions to a ‘God’s eye view’? (Pratt et al , 2020, p. 174)…”

Section: Ocean As Rich Feminist Space: Towards a Feminism Of Watery E...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking-with Decorator Crabs: Oceanic Feminism and Material Remediation in the Multispecies Aquarium

Tien¹,

Burmann²

2022

Feminist Review

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Feminist scholarship has increasingly turned towards the ocean as a conceptual apparatus in which to think through the complex philosophical and ethical dilemmas of the Anthropocene. Responding to the ebbs, flows and transformations of the oceanic turn, our article outlines our interactions with four decorator crabs. It begins by situating our experience of thinking-with these crabs as a feminist practice of care within the conceptual context of the ocean. Our article then draws on the knowledge that arose out of our fertile entanglements with the crabs to propose that: 1) the aquarium, with its colonial histories of subjugation, is a fertile space to re-image human–aquatic relationalities, revealing the fallacy of human control over ‘nature’ and emphasising the agency of marine worlds; 2) Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality is a powerful way to think through the consequences of an acidifying ocean, both for ourselves and for our shelled companions; and 3) remediation is a radical approach to taking seriously the materiality of watery worlds. The objective of the article is to craft a practice of material feminism that entangles our more-than-human bodies to learn-with decorator crabs. In doing so, we show that the aquarium is a potent space of transformation that allows us to imagine new and distinctly feminist entanglements that dismantle hierarchies. We show that thinking-with the materiality of marine worlds is a series of remediations, both material and discursive, that dissolve the boundaries between entities, creating an embodied environmental ethics that is necessary as a feminist challenge to the Anthropocene.

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Non-Human Agency, Surprise Interventions, and Marine Futures. A Commentary on the ‘Whale’s Tail’ Metro Incident in Spijkenisse (NL)

Buitendijk

2023

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

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In November 2020, a sculpture of a whale’s tail installed next to a metro station in Spijkenisse (NL) caught a derailed train falling from the overhead platform, preventing total catastrophe by saving the driver’s life. In this article, I argue that the sculpture’s unexpected intervention is emblematic of the entanglement between human beings and the natural and built environment in the Anthropocene, and provides new insight into the independent agency of non- and more-than-human beings. In particular, the incident reveals the capacity of other-than-human entities to impact human lifeworlds by rewriting existing social and material relationships. By acting so decisively in a situation spun beyond human control, the artwork both saved the day and created a novel configuration of heterogeneous elements, the train-wreck-on-a-frame. Following the incident, I suggest that the autonomy of ‘things’ requires humanity to start cultivating an attitude of receptivity: to learn to listen to unexpected expressions of agency, and follow their cues for the development of a more-than-human future. Building on these insights, I review various interactions between human beings and the coastal and marine environment, demonstrating that other-than-human actors already intervene in our lifeworlds more frequently than might be expected. Examples include newfound knowledge on ocean currents and gyres resulting from container spills and dumped plastics; the capacity of near- and offshore capital structures to act as nursery habitats; and demands for additional space by rivers and the sea itself. I conclude that surprise interventions by non- and more-than-human actors can help shape future marine environments, benefiting all involved.

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Fathom

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Wild Sea Swimming as a Slow Intimacy: Towards Reconfiguring Scholarship

Wild Sea Swimming as a Slow Intimacy: Towards Reconfiguring Scholarship

Thinking-with Decorator Crabs: Oceanic Feminism and Material Remediation in the Multispecies Aquarium

Non-Human Agency, Surprise Interventions, and Marine Futures. A Commentary on the ‘Whale’s Tail’ Metro Incident in Spijkenisse (NL)

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