Terminology Flashcards
Oceanic turn
interest of various disciplines in the ocean as an “elemental medium” – as a source of inspiration for the arts and (environmental) humanities
Maritime (literary) studies
It is through the biographies and literature of the men who have lived and fought on the sea, and who have undertaken great voyages of exploration by sea, that we are able to chart the growth of the world as we know it today
Critical Ocean Studies
- Critical perspectives are essential to understanding oceans, coasts and islands (and ocean/coastal/island peoples)
- interdisciplinary field of critical ocean studies
Blue Humanities
critically examines the planet’s troubled seas and distressed freshwaters from various socio-cultural, literary, historical, aesthetic, ethical, and theoretical perspectives
New Materialism
part of the material turn currently sweeping through the humanities and social sciences and entails a paradigm shift toward a more material(ist) understanding of social and cultural life.
The Maritime Turn: early phase
o interest in the ocean as a region with histories, cultural values, and political meanings
o attempt to go beyond terrestrial history and
o to draw attention to the role the oceans have played for human history.
o Hardly any acknowledgement of other, non-European cultural engagements with the sea;
o little sense of the ocean as a body of water, and as a global ocean.
The Black Atlantic
- influential but abstract ideas
- Africa, America, the Caribbean and Europe constitute a single zone; countries bordering Atlantic is one region rather than different countries as all affected (Slave trade)
What does Shakespeare achieve through his engagement with the sea?
- explores the metaphorical potential of a mysterious and unknown – ‘invisible’ – space;
- conveys a sense of a rapidly expanding of the world;
- conveys what it was like to live in an aquatic context;
- explores the possibilities of language to create an alien and mysterious space;
- uses sea travel as a motif for the exploration of life
–> Shakespeare explores metaphorical potential of mysterious space, sense of rapidly expanding world, language conveying alien space, sea motif for life exploration.
Trans-corporeality
- pertains to fluidity between material and theoretical bodies, challenging dualities and dichotomies.
- assumes inter- and intra-connections, intra-actions, entanglements and transits between human and other-than-human bodies.
miasma
an unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapour
5 conditions for mass seaside holidays
- Fast, cheap transport from the population centers was essential.
- Availability of a regular surplus income which could be saved to cover the cost of an unpaid holiday away from home.
- Several consecutive days’ agreed holiday were required, with the employer’s toleration if not his full approval.
- The accessible resorts needed to be capable of responding to working-class demand, by the adaptation of attitudes, amenities, and accommodation to the new opportunities.
- A related point: a large proportion of the labor force had to prefer the seaside holiday to alternative ways of allocating free time and surplus income, for the time and money available for leisure remained limited, and there were plenty of more immediate gratifications on offer in the industrial towns.
Tenets of New Materialism
- Matter is generative and relational (‘intra-active’)
- Agency is separated from intentionality
- Agency is not exclusively human: all material things are agential
- There is no Cartesian division between mind and matter: the mind is material, matter is alive (‘vibrant’)
- New Materialism exposes the assumption that humans control nature, that they are ‘masters’, as a fallacy
Spring Tide
- During full or new moons average tidal ranges are slightly larger. This occurs twice each month. The moon appears new (dark) when it is directly between the Earth and the sun. The moon appears full when the Earth is between the moon and the sun. In both cases, the gravitational pull of the sun is “added” to the gravitational pull of the moon on Earth, causing the oceans to bulge a bit more than usual. This means that high tides are a little higher and low tides are a little lower than average.
- These are called spring tides, a common historical term that has nothing to do with the season of spring. Rather, the term is derived from the concept of the tide “springing forth.” Spring tides occur twice each lunar month all year long, without regard to the season.
Aims of blue humanities
- take into account water spaces in history, cultural and literary studies
- historicize water spaces
- acknowledge agential force of water
Tidalectics
tide + dialectics (the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions)
- oscillating and cyclical rather than linear and teleological narrative
