Thinking from multiple oceans: historical and elemental lineages and futures of ocean geography(s)

Steinberg, Philip

Abstract

This article considers how a tension in critical ocean geography between thinking with and thinking from the ocean can be elucidated through an engagement with a number of Black scholars asking related questions. Focusing on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and its interpretation by C.L.R. James and Paul Gilroy, as well as other scholars in the critical ocean geography/critical ocean studies and Black studies traditions, I suggest that a pervasive challenge to oceanic thinking is the need to balance, on the one hand, the tendency to think with the ocean’s perceived exceptionality as a scaffold for non-normative thinking with, on the other hand, the desire to think from the encounters that occur in ocean-space and that historically have played a crucial role in constructing identities and futures of peoples who bear the experience of the ocean’s watery depths and turbulence. I conclude by arguing for an approach that is both historical and elemental, in order to construct narratives that point to the ocean not simply as a repository of meaning or as a site for projecting dreams, but as a lively space where thoughts, understandings, and narrations emerge from the entanglements of water and life, forcings and histories, memories and forgettings, that occur within.

Citation

Steinberg, P. (online). Thinking from multiple oceans: historical and elemental lineages and futures of ocean geography(s). Social and Cultural Geography, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2476507

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 15, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Mar 18, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 6, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 8, 2025
• Journal: Social and Cultural Geography
• Print ISSN: 1464-9365
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1197
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2476507
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3781459