📚 Outing the Queer Ocean. Earlier this year, ocean scientist and transmedia artist Mae Lubetkin (
@hadalflux ) and I co-authored a journal article called the “Queer Ocean: Obfuscating Territorial Zones”. Inspired by the Pacific and their histories, connection to the ocean and how art mediates the deep ocean in the face of deep sea mining, unfurls our critic of the technocratic Western scientific and legal imposition of how we see and sense the world ocean.
🐋 The American Sāmoan artist Dan Taulapapa McMullin (
@dantaulapapamcmullin ), in conversation with us, also helped us frame how the queer in itself is a English operative word, excluding multitude ways of queer through language, visuals and grammar, thus, queering the queer. Drawing from the fa’fafine, the ancient Sāmoan trans* cultures, we offer our critical thoughts to expand on research and methods through trans* world of being on the ocean for epistemic level of inclusion.
🇼🇸 Having had the opportunity to present in Sāmoa reminded me that Pacific islands do the least harm to the planet, and yet carry the heaviest climate burdens. And still, global academia hardly shows up here to decolonise. We, as scholars, need to do better. Scholars must engage with these institutions, and be present in the communities most affected - uplift and enrich the region with our exchange and encounters.
🌊 Published in the special issue of Thinking the world from the Deep Ocean: Seabed Mining across Resource, Regulatory, and Ethical Frontiers, Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific. Vol. XVVIII 2025. Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law and supported by National Technological University of Singapore. Thanks to Jonathan Galka for the opportunity and coordination of this special issue.
🐟 Link on my website and bio.
