From Relational to Abyssal Geographies

Keywords: islands, Caribbean, abyssal, oceans, relationality, Black Studies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 13

Abstract

Island and oceanic geographies are gaining increasing purchase in the development of contemporary critical thought. Both have gained significant traction in recent developments in critical Black and Indigenous Studies which highlight entangled becomings shaped by catastrophic histories of violence, chattel slavery and genocide, reproduced in (post)colonial structures of power and domination. Here the recent renewed attention to the Caribbean as subject matter and as a generative space for critical thinkers has opened up spaces for non-Eurocentric or non-modernist perspectives to emerge which take ‘abyssal’, rather than ‘relational’, approaches to geography. This talk draws out how an abyssal grammar reads the Caribbean in distinct ways that seek to avoid the modern legacies of relational approaches and their entrapment within ontologies of inter-action. Abyssal approaches open up radical possibilities for a refusal or deconstruction of ontology. These approaches are anti- or para- ontological. This talk examines the distinctiveness and stakes of abyssal approaches which turn to the Caribbean to rethink the centrality of the colour line in the construction and deconstruction of worlds.