Before Disciplinary Territorialty: The Oceanic Turn in the Long Eighteenth Century

Adriana Craciun
English
UC Riverside

Bodies of water increasingly represent utopian possibilities for transcending the boundaries that distinguish peoples, territories, typologies and discourses in the global eighteenth century. This “oceanic turn” or “New Thalassology” in current critical studies is characterized by a disciplinary fluidity that is potentially liberating, even as it threatens to overwhelm “oceanic” studies with its sheer expansiveness. This conference addressed how the maritime worlds and discourses of the long eighteenth century can help us rethink the divisions of knowledge emerging in this era.