10.06.2024

Departmental Seminar: "Ocean Thinking and the Critique of the Modern Territorial Imagination in International Relations"

Flavia Guerra Cavalcanti, Associate Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and currently a postdoctoral Global Encounters fellow at Tübingen University on Wednesday at 16:00 c.t. in Room 124 of the Institute. Alternatively, you can join via Zoom

This research investigates how Oceanic Thinking, particularly the concept of more-than-wet ontology, can destabilize conceptions about territory, sovereignty, citizenship, and belonging that emerge from a supposed binarism between Land and Sea embedded in the discipline of IR. We argue that the concept of more-than-wet-ontology goes beyond some theories that have already contributed to similar criticisms of the discipline of IR because it shows how the unstable materiality of water (liquid, gas, vapor, ice) provides clues about the limitation of an international politic that produces a static cartographic representation of an ice edge characterized by mobility and spatial instability.

Flavia Guerra Cavalcanti is an Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations  and Defense (IRID) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is currently a  postdoctoral Global Encounters fellow at Tuebingen University, where she is developing the project “Oceanic Thinking in Migrant Resistance: How Wet Ontology Can Destabilize the Fixed  conceptions of Territory and Belonging”. Her main areas of academic interest are Critical Security Studies, Migration and Postcolonial studies, and specifically boat migration in maritime contexts. 

You’re invited to join us on Wednesday at 16:00 c.t. in Room 124 of the Institute. Alternatively, you can join via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 930 8975 0663
Passcode: 142311