Death to Disposability in the North Pacific Gyre

Keywords: oceans, waste, gender, geoengineering, feminist political ecology
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Thursday
Session Start / End Time: 4/8/2021 03:05 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/8/2021 04:20 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

Pollution, predominantly plastics, pervades the world’s oceans. With a case study of an oceanic geoengineering project, this article argues that this pollution is a product of capitalism and a form of gendered violence that takes place on a structural, political-economic scale and that attempts to collect it from the open ocean in a process of enclosure embody extractive economics and neocolonialism. This article examines these political-economic violences of marine debris in the form of enclosure practices that territorialize oceanic space with discourse analysis and close reading of a case study on a nonprofit organization planning to collect and remove marine debris in the open North Pacific Ocean.