Reconfiguring Ocean Life by Thinking with Oceans and Whales

• Published in: Il Tolomeo
• Main Author: Concilio, Carmen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; French; Italian; Portuguese
• Published: Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari 2023
• Subjects: New Zealand Environmental Humanities. South Africa. Southern Ocean. Whales; English literature; PR1-9680; French literature - Italian literature - Spanish literature - Portuguese literature; PQ1-3999; Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration; JV1-9480; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2023/01/013; https://doaj.org/article/6362bc27788c400f8caffc24d1a0bf00

Whales are stranded along the Atlantic Ocean in North America, the press spread the news in February 2023. Witi Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider (1987) frames a similar episode: “Two hundred whales, lifeless on the beach and in the water” (1987, 85). Stranded whales are protagonists in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller (2005), too. Here, a whale is the pretext to explore gender issues, role models in traditional indigenous societies, capitalist economy and tourism, the perception of chieftainship, shamans and spirituality. Making use of acoustic ecology (Carson 1955; Shafer 1994), whales ‘speak’ of relations between humans, non-humans (Huggan 2021) and oceans (Regazzoni 2022).