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Diving with Donna Haraway and the promise of a blue planet
Citation
Picken, F and Ferguson, T, Diving with Donna Haraway and the promise of a blue planet, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32, (2) pp. 329-341. ISSN 0263-7758 (2014) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright 2014 Pion and its licensors
DOI: doi:10.1068/d13016p
Abstract
It has been two decades since Haraway spoke about the ‘promise of monsters’, and
seventy years since a novel kind of sea monster was created through the Aqua-Lung, giving
‘underwater worlds’ better access to humans. By revisiting and examining the combinatory
effects of these historical moments, this paper illustrates the ‘promise of scuba divers’ who
are somewhat monstrous in their potential to disturb common ideas about being human
and life on land. In exchanging ‘sacred ground’ for submersion beneath the sea, scuba
diving redefines the limits of human experience and emphasises the historical and largely
forgotten primacy of land-based coordinates in theorising human life. Under the sea,
these coordinates are vastly altered so that even preconscious markers, like breathing, are
transformed through a circuitry that includes humans, science, technology, and nature in
a ‘body-incorporate’. ‘Immersion’ becomes a threshold beyond which humans and nature,
society and space are discovered anew in the reversal of the significance of territory to
planetary life.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | ocean, technology, experience, space |
Research Division: | Studies in Human Society |
Research Group: | Anthropology |
Research Field: | Social and Cultural Anthropology |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society |
UTAS Author: | Picken, F (Dr Felicity Picken) |
UTAS Author: | Ferguson, T (Mr Tristan Ferguson) |
ID Code: | 88059 |
Year Published: | 2014 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 2 |
Deposited By: | Social Sciences |
Deposited On: | 2014-01-09 |
Last Modified: | 2015-04-29 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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