Doing cultural studies in rough seas: the COVID-19 ocean multiple

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to demonstrate what a conjunctural analysis of the oceanic manifestation of COVID-19 might look like. While the ocean has seemingly remained on the periphery during the ongoing pandemic, the marine has nevertheless been deeply affected as a space of more-than-human connection. As we know, it was at a seafood market (The Huanan Seafood Market) that the first signs of the virus allegedly emerged – an event that propelled the circulation of disgust and racism that was to follow. I take three sites: Botany Bay, Sydney; the Ruby Princess cruise ship; and the effect of COVID-19 on fish supply chains and the lives and livelihoods of fishers especially in the global south. I draw on John Clarke’s argument that ‘tracing the different dynamics and forces that come together to constitute the conjuncture is a substantial challenge’, and Meaghan Morris’ call for site-specific thinking in cultural studies. This is, I argue, a time for messy digging in the swamp of the pandemic if we are to find thin threads of hope for our more-than-human world, and our discipline.

KEYWORDS:

• Conjunctural analysis
• oceanic cultures
• cultural studies
• keywords
• site-specific thinking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Further information

This Special Issue article has been comprehensively reviewed by the Special Issue editors, Associate Professor Ted Striphas and Professor John Nguyet Erni.

Notes

1 While Innis’s approach was foundational in Canada, his influence also spread to Australia where, as Ian Angus and Brian Shoesmith argued in 1993 a revived interest in Innis could intervene in what they termed ‘cultural studies … endless oscillation between text and audience which effaces questions of power, or deflects them into spurious claims of resistance’ (1993, p. 6).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ARC Discovery Project [grant number DP200100447].

Notes on contributors

Elspeth Probyn

Elspeth Probyn FAHA, FASSA is Professor of Gender & Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published several ground-breaking monographs including Sexing the Self (Routledge, 1993), Outside Belongings (Routledge, 1996), Carnal Appetites (Routledge, 2000), Blush: Faces of Shame (Minnesota, 2006), and Eating the Ocean (Duke, 2016). Her current research focuses on fishing as extraction, fish markets as gendered spaces of labour, and anthropocentric oceanic change. She is the co-editor of a new collection, Sustaining Seas: Oceanic Space and the Politics of Care (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).