Relating to the Ocean

This double lecture sheds light on the consequences of taking a fluid, oceanic space as point of departure of this series. While Immanuel Kant has warned us to leave the shores (of experience) to venture into a boundless ocean (of speculative claims), our joint lecture explores the potentials and requirements of relating to the ocean in philosophy. The double lecture acknowledges discussions in oceanic humanities, literary studies, and ecofeminism, while relating specifically to oceanic perspectives from Africa and Latin America. 

Monika Christine Rohmer explores the potential of relating to fluid African thought systems by following two works of literary fiction, namely Fatou Diome’s Les veilleurs de Sangomar and Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness. Diome and Mda make the cosmogonies and worldviews of the coastal protagonists of their novels intelligible to the reader. She proposes philosophical inquiry to take inspiration from this approach to establish relational thinking as a point of departure for rethinking and reconceptualizing the place of humanity in the world.

Liliana Gómez focuses on the concept of “liquid ecology” as a way of “thinking with water,” to examine countercurrents within hegemonic systems and ideologies of extractivism and to discuss liquidity and fluidity not merely as metaphors and allegories, drawing on aesthetic articulations in Latin American and Caribbean arts, such as those of Minia Biabiany or Carolina Caycedo. At the same time, she aims to productively juxtapose epistemological and aesthetic perspectives on the liquid—as imagined and articulated through the arts as a social practice—in order to uncover fluid relationships, dismantle notions of petrified aesthetic forms, and delve into new eco-social spaces of community.