Towards a Blue Humanity

Abstract

Towards A Blue Humanity Ian Buchanan (bio) and Celina Jeffery (bio) Although the ocean covers seventy percent of the planet and provides more than half of the oxygen vital to all life on earth it figures comparatively little in global cultural production. Most of us tend to treat the ocean as that which must be traversed rather than explored for itself—we lay beside it at the beach, we cruise on its surface, or more usually fly several thousand feet above it, but we don't enter it (except perhaps for brief dives), and we certainly don't dwell in it. Yet ocean-going, particularly of cargo from China to the U.S., underpins globalization, so much so that the ocean has been described as the "missing context" of postmodernity, and from an environmental point of view, the ocean is a repository for plastic pollution, waste and effluence and is rapidly dying as global temperatures rise. There is a certain kind of politics of invisibility at work here—we do not comprehend complex eco-systems of oceans or the interdependence of the seas, earth and atmosphere. Much less, do we acknowledge the effects of the depletion, erasure and expulsion of biological life from much of the world's oceans. The ocean is, as Allan Sekula acknowledged, the "forgotten space" in which the twin fissures of oceanic degradation and social injustice are converging and ramifying (Sekula 2010). The "Anthropocene" ocean then is characterized by a particular kind of "slow violence" described by Rob Nixon, which is perhaps less visible and spectacular than a catastrophe like Deepwater Horizon oil spill might suggest, and yet more profoundly unjust and enduring in its long-term ramifications (2011, 21-22). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5% highlighted the urgency of action needed to address global warming of oceans, resulting in acidification, the bleaching of coral reefs, rising tides, and the melting of the circumpolar regions (IPCC report 2018). Added to this heady mix are the impacts of over-fishing, industrial fishing, and ghost nets which have already resulted in extinction patterns, interruption of local food chains, and extensive plastic waste. Additionally, pollution in the form of oil, fertilizers, nuclear waste, and noise have further contributed to oceanic toxification. The cascading effects of these factors and their impact upon the Earth's life support system have yet to be fully understood, but the appearance of dead zones—often caused by algal blooms particularly by phosphorous run off from farms—in numerous areas of the world's oceans are a shocking sign of impending [End Page 11] collapse. It is interesting to note that at this time such algal blooms have caused the citizens of Toledo, USA to attempt to give Lake Erie legal rights to protect the lake, called the Lake Erie Bills of Rights. What are the cultural discourses of this hitherto unimaginable erasure and expulsion of biological life from much of the world's oceans? This special issue reflects upon a growing body of work known as the "blue humanities" which is historicizing the ocean and making it part of contemporary consciousness in a way—we hope—that will enable environmental activism's bid to "save" the ocean. A cornerstone of this issue is how we understand blue humanities in the context of an ecological catastrophe that is rarely seen by the human eye. As Nixon argues in his book Slow Violence, without the attention of writer-activists—and we might add, artists, film-makers, poets, and photographers—the environmental issues we face could go unnoticed, misapprehended and unchecked (2011, 14-15). This special section of symplokē explores how we can leverage transdisciplinary inquiry and begins to say why we need not only a blue humanities but also a blue humanity—a sense in which we restore our sense of connectedness and in the words of Rachel Carson, "return to the sea," in part, through a consideration of the contributions of creative artists and thinkers (2014, 247). This issue gathers texts that use critical theory, philosophy and visual art and culture, to demarcate how ocean-based economies have resulted in transnational environmental trends with...