Journals

The contributions in this special issue magnify how temporalization of the ocean is an ideological and political project. Where Hang Zhou and Jieyi Xie juxtapose the cultural value of the maritime heritage of the Middle Passage against the exploitation of seafloor resources that denies any historical depth to the ocean, Pearson focuses on submerged shipwrecks as not the exclusive property of states or companies but also as living organisms in the ocean. In turn, Salemink shows that the refugees disappeared in the Mediterranean abyss could be mnemonically recovered through their material commemoration in spite of Europe’s indifference. These analyses of how maritime environments and the human practices and productions associated with them are being harnessed, appropriated and reworked show the importance of understanding the politics of ocean-oriented futures.

Our exploration of such themes enables us to reimagine and re-value our connections to the ocean worlds, where environmental histories become part of a new way of thinking about the hyphen in maritime-marine heritages. Taking their physical interconnectivity rather than analytical rupture as a point of departure, the maritime-marine nexus indexes not only horizontal spaces and vertical state powers, but also the voluminous dimensions of natural histories of the oceans that encompass heritage practices and claims. To this end, we propose to investigate the role of oceans not only as seafaring routes or lines of connectivity but also as domains available for all kinds of living things. We consciously turn away from the conceptualisation of the world into distinctive continents and oceans to show their relationality along geocultural and environmental scales and temporalities, and the implications this holds for maritime heritage claims. This collection of articles may serve as portraits of oceanic ontologies that oscillate between these dimensions in their pursuit of plural transoceanic identities and exclusivist terrestrial priorities. In that sense, the envisioning of oceanic geographies and maritime heritage is a politically and culturally charged exercise that projects oceans and seas not as neutral and culturally equalising spaces, but as subject to human-made hierarchies. In broad theoretical strokes but also in empirical detail, then, the contributions to this theme section show how heritage could be understood differently – unmoored and de-terrestrial, unfixed and fluid – if viewed from the sea.