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The oceans were never our to know, and it is a master trope of the blue humanities - back to Steve Mentz and his discussions of the 'new thalassology' that European thought is not at home in the ocean, but that it is also possible to embrace a sea of islands that is home, that is knowable, that is complex and ever-changing and yet part of the social sphere.[^1] When exploring the role of the Mediterranean in a new thalassology, Horden and Purcell ask asks how '...the seas that are its objects join up to constitute a changing global history'[^2] This history evades temporal and geographic boundaries, embracing an agential assemblage of actors and influences that cannot but full known. At its core, seeing the ocean not as a series of regions but as an ever-changing conglomeration of ever-changing global interconnections requires a vision of both surface and depth that explored what Horden and Purcell describe as a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece is unique - and in which each region plays a unique role, and yet in which the pieces form to create a whole that is greater and more co-dependent than its parts might suggest. Understanding the complexity and excess of the puzzle is part of the history-writing process. However, unlike a conventional puzzle, the ocean has no epistemic 'edges'. We will never find the borders of the puzzle. It has no edge pieces of corners to orient the mind, only more pieces. In a world of subsumed cause and effect and climate processes that exceed human apprehension, this complex and interconnected thalassological vision has never been more essential. Attempting to put together the pieces grants knowledge, but there will always be more pieces. |
I was intrigued by the idea that "European thought is not at home in the ocean" and it set me thinking about how you'd go about adding more detail when requested by a peer reviewer in such a fragmentary and (at the moment) non-linear text? Would you add it here or add it to an 'earlier' fragment? Not a request for more detail per se just raising a question of how to approach this.
Deep-Maps-Blue-Humanities/20241022 - Chapter 1 Draft 1.0/CH1 Paragraphs/CH1 - Puzzles.md
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I was intrigued by the idea that "European thought is not at home in the ocean" and it set me thinking about how you'd go about adding more detail when requested by a peer reviewer in such a fragmentary and (at the moment) non-linear text? Would you add it here or add it to an 'earlier' fragment? Not a request for more detail per se just raising a question of how to approach this.