Texts, Images and Sounds of the Oceanic: from Cultural Geography to Non-Representational Theory

Oceanic and other types of natural and atmospheric data transcend their scientific domain. Their definition and further objectification also occupy cultural studies approaches. If one tries to look for such genealogies and paradigm shifts, the greatest trend has been the objectification of landscapes and mapping, which has covered the entire semiotic field of large bodies of water. However, this spatial accessibility has become less obvious: from a simple object, the oceanic is now both dispersed and disorienting, impossible to define through depth and cartographic calculations alone. Our intertwining (finding traces of human presence in the waters, the oceanic entanglements of our waters) are becoming less legible to traditional approaches and ontologies, both within oceanography and ecocritical cultural studies. Where can the accessibility of the oceanic now be grounded within new non-representational approaches?