Oceans as Site and Struggle of Global Dis/Ordering
Rather than concentrating only on how oceans are formally framed or regulated as objects of international legal ordering, this episode foregrounds the patterns and imaginaries of global dis/ordering that thinking through the ocean reveal. Which material historical conditions have shaped the current legal constitution of oceanic space? Which new legal and political temporalities, geographies, and subjectivities might ‘thinking oceanically’ generate? How are international law and the ocean co-constituted – through its specific spatial zones, its depths and bottoms, its vexing vents, and amphibious legalities? Which critical practices can enable us to think and act in unruly oceans – through its waves, marine mammals, and blue legalities – as the ever-shifting terrain of violence, struggle, and political imagination?
Convened by Marie Petersmann (LSE) and Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (QMUL).
The Speakers:
Surabhi Ranganathan is Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. Her work on the law of the sea, its biodiversity within and beyond national jurisdiction, and the techno-utopian imaginaries that today drive the licensing of mining activities in the deep seabed, offers insights into the ordering and disordering of the ocean, its colonial history, and political economy.
Renisa Mawani is Canada Research Chair in Colonial Legal Histories, Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, and currently Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary University of London School of Law. Her work on ‘oceans as method’, the imperial history of the jurisdiction of the sea, the legal personification of slave ships and legal objectification of slaves raises important and urgent questions about ocean ontologies and ecologies.
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Sound / artwork by Tobias and Dominique Koch