The fifth chapter analyzes the poetry of Linda Hogan, the science writing of Rachel Carson, Neil Shubin and others, and the scholarship of Stefan Helmreich, Mark McMenanmin and Dianna McMenamin with the texts and films of plastic pollution activists and artists. This chapter considers the cultural work of narratives and figurations that connect human bodies to the sea. Even though the long evolutionary arc that ties humans to their aquatic ancestors may evoke modes of kinship with the seas, formulations that end with the human as a finished product of that process conclude too soon. A more potent marine trans-corporeality would submerge the human within global networks of consumption, waste, and pollution, capturing the strange agencies of the ordinary stuff of our lives.
The World at Risk: Vulnerability, Precarity, and Connectedness
