22. A turbulent materiality: oceanic turn(s) and more-than-human geographies

Chairs: Gabriella Palermo and Giulia de Spuches (University of Palermo)

Type: in person

In the last few decades, what is called the oceanic turn (Anderson and Peters 2014; Bear 2017; Blum 2010; Peters and Steinberg 2015, 2019; DeLoughrey 2016, 2019; Peters et al. 2022) has strongly emerged within the geographies of the sea, the environmental humanities and more generally the social sciences. This new positionality at the sea level works on the one hand, to observe the new forms assumed by the relationship between capitalism and the sea; on the other hand, to develop alternative policies, narratives and relationships suggested by, for, on, with water. This turn is actually intertwined with multiple turns within geographical research, as for example the material (re)turn (Whatmore 2006) or the volumetric turn (Peters and Turner 2018; Jackman and Squire 2021). Specifically, the feminist new materialisms work to foster the possibility of thinking with the oceanic (Alaimo 2012, Neimanis 2019) in order to develop new ecologies, new imaginaries and more-than-human relations as an intervention in a world marked by the violence of extractive and anthropocentric capitalism (Haraway 2016, Tsing 2015); a world in which, at the same time, it is necessary to intervene in order to construct alternative possible futures. Positioning ourselves in this weaving process, in this session we seek contributions that observe the sea and the oceanic as spaces of possibility and promotion of other imaginaries, other narratives and other politics through new materialisms and more-than-human geographies.

Keywords: critical ocean thinking, oceanic turns, new materialism, more-than-human; imaginaries


Parallel sessions

7th June, Room U6-1e
S22-1
14:00-15:30
New Materialisms (Chairs: Gabriella Palermo and Giulia de Spuches, University of Palermo)

Jessica Lehman, Feminist new materialism and history at sea
Tovi Fenster, Gendered Bodies and Clothings as marking invisible boundaries between the sea and the city
Luca Bertocci, The Sea in Massimo Cacciari’s Geophilosophy
Alessandra Bonazzi,“Hypersea” and the Whale: some suggestions for “float light and right” in the turmoil of the present
Massimiliano Fantò, Alien Invasive Species as assemblages: a critical analysis


7th June, Room U6-1e
S22-2
15:45-17:15
More-than-human Ocean Ecologies (Chairs: Giulia de Spuches and Gabriella Palermo, University of Palermo)

Chiara Certomà, Federico Fornaro, Paolo Giaccaria, Staying with the Problem in the Ocean. On the plastisphere as hybrid ecological formation of the Chthlucene
Moritz Albrecht, Unfolding alternative spatial imaginaries in novel blue bioeconomy developments: sectoral study on seaweed farming and recirculating aquaculture
Friederike Gesing, Caring for the coast: The more-than-human political ecologies of coastal protection
Koki Takahashi, The importance and meanings of built environments constructed between mainland Japan and its peripheral is
Alain Boucher and Guy Mercier (Poster Presentation), Every one of us: POSSESS THE SEA