11. Mai |  19:00   |  Søren Frank (Odense)

»Maritime Spaces and Places«

With the significant shift from sail to steam during the nineteenth century, the maritime world became increasingly subject to what Weber characterized as modernity's propensity for dis-enchanting activities, that is, a temporality that is future-oriented (and believed to be potentially pre-calculable), a spatiality that is (with Spengler and Heidegger) geometricized and abstract, and an existentiality that is alienated and increasingly bodyless. However, in maritime literature from the post-sail era authors continue to look back at the sailing era, often with an underlying nostalgic tone, as if to re-vitalize or re-awaken what has been lost in dis-enchantment through a re-enchantment of the world: instead of control of the future they emphasize contingency and immediacy, instead of abstract space that emphasize concrete, phenomenal place, and instead of alienation they emphasize bodily presence and »being-in-sync«.

This lecture will present different spatial and placial modalities of sea life and life onboard the ship, and at the same time it will attempt to answer why maritime literature is still written at a time when the sea and the ship have clearly lost the (fictional) magnetic power they boasted in the nineteenth century.