Salt lingers in the blood. A geographical dialogue on the Oceanic Sense of Place

This paper presents an enquiry into the possibility of defining an Oceanic Sense of Place, drawing upon critical ocean studies and engaging with geographical scholarship on place-making. It explores how the experiences of seagoing people contribute to the emergence of an Oceanic Sense of Place, grounded in emotionally felt and collectively elaborated attachments to the sea – expressed through imaginaries, narratives, symbols, jargons, and systems of life – and in the kinship between human and non-human communities and the Ocean. The paper unfolds as a dialogue—an imaginary navigation into our relationship with the Ocean, relies on reflective, qualitative embodied and embedded research which produced an auto-ethnographic and theory-informed dialogue upon place-making in the high sea. In line with Haraway’s call for “stories (and theories) that are able to gather the complexities and keep the edges open” (Haraway, 2016, pp. 100-101), this paper unfolds as a imaginary navigation into our relationship with the Ocean. The creation of distinctive entanglements prompts a series of questions and suggests (embodied, embedded, and culturally constrained) responses: Can we consider the sea our home? How does this sense of place differ from land-based experiences? What technological translations and sensorial engagements are mobilised to render specific portions of the ocean recognisable? And, finally, how might this fluid, transient, and temporally grounded sense of place offer new perspectives on exclusionary practices tied to belonging and appropriation?