Tag Archives: mentz

Deterritorializing Preface

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In this article, Steve Mentz mentions seven words and how they can overall re-shape our ways of thinking, viewing politics, and intellect. Nothing is stable, not even the land we are upon. It’s constantly changing- such as the environment itself, nature, our values and beliefs, even the cities we live in are constantly changing, so why shouldn’t we? This is why it’s important for us to allow our state of thinking to flow like the currents, as Mentz put it. If our thinking never changes we are allowing ourselves to stay close-minded. We need to have a shift in our thinking. Mentz says “Our metaphors must float on water rather than resting on ground. In an aqueous environment, nothing stays on the surface forever” (Mentz xvi). Mentz here makes a great point. The language we use should be evolving just as we are. By staying on the surface and resting on the ground, it makes it static and unchangeable. There is no fluidity. But if the language we use floats, it is able to adapt. And adaptability is key here. People were able to adapt on land, and we are still adapting to the changes in our world and society. And since the world and the people are changing, our language can too. 

Another thing that I found interesting was word 3: flow. We view our achievements and our progress as one straight path. Because that’s how we’re told to view our lives. According to Mentz, it’s “linear”. For example, we get told to go to school, graduate, and get a job. That is linear progress. It’s like we have a set path for us and we’re told to follow it in order to succeed. However, Mentz throws out the old and brings in the new. By looking at our lives like we do the ocean, it’ll bring in new opportunities. The ocean is at a constant state of flow, and by applying this to our lives, it makes our path not so linear and instead makes it so that it’s all over the place. It makes it “messier, more confusing, and less familiar” (xvi).  This allows us to be free and do as we please with our lives, but still achieve things. Mentz encourages us to open our minds and to look at our world differently. 

While I do agree with Mentz, I understand not wanting to have a “flow” in your life. Being stable is what makes us comfortable. Knowing we have stability in our lives and the world is what helps us sleep at night. The ocean is full of secrets and that could drive away our ability to think deeper. We are comfortable with what we have on land because it’s what we could see with the eye. Anything we can’t see makes us uneasy. And that’s where our comfortability with land comes in. Even though we view land as such a stable place, it’s constantly changing. Which is why it’s important to view things differently. It’s all about being uncomfortable and questioning things. The more curious we are, the more we’ll go out and learn. And this can go back to Emerson as well. Going out in nature will heal you and allow you to be more open-minded. So, allow yourself to go out and make a connection with the sea and land. 

Realistic Representations in Blue Humanities

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As our environmental policies regress under a regime which declines to accept the harpooning of our planet, it is more necessary than ever to pay attention to the blue humanities. But, as policies shift, so too must the aim of blue humanities. As captivating as it is, it is time to stop romanticizing the sea. It is no longer a scene that unveils “pristine nature” in contrast to the industrialized land we inhabit. Industrialization has meandered its way into the ocean, into the water. Steve Mentz uses Aristotle’s conceptualization of poetics to help define his term: “Poetics of planetary water”. In this concept, Aristotle explains poetics as “a system of representations”. Mentz is drawn to the notion that “poetics combines pleasure and pain” in regard to water that both “allure and threaten human bodies”. Mentz furthers Aristotle’s claim that “though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them”, as a parallel of the enchanting, yet dangerous relationship we have had with the ocean throughout human history. In blue humanities future, this notion will have to be reversed: Though the ocean, the water, may be a beautiful sight, we must agonize over the most realistic representations of it. The trash ridden, biomagnificated, micro-plastic filled animals that inhabit the bleached, dead, splintering coral of the acidified ocean. We need depictions of a climate changed future. Paintings of risen seas. New York halfway under water. Undiscovered life straining to create ecosystems in the shipwreck that was once Manhattan. Netflix series that delineate a climate fueled apocalypse rather than a zombie or digital one. That is, if we want to see another societal push for eco-change. Mentz coins the phrase “watery criticism” the aims of which “include both describing the complex working of water in our environment and also imagining ways to change our relationships to it.” The immensity and resilience of the ocean conceals hundreds of years of pollution the way small bodied ecosystems cannot. Refocusing the blue humanities to embody all forms of water, captures the deterioration climate change imparts on small ecosystems. Therefore, adapting our attention to all forms of water changes our relationship with it. As much as the blue humanities depends on water, water depends on the blue humanities.