Flytande geografi

Abstract

Fluid Geography: Harry Martinson and the Materiality of the Sea Interest in the ocean has increased over the past decades. This includes interest in the relationship between capitalism and the ocean. Philip Steinberg and others have argued that capitalism dematerializes the sea and produces it as empty space. Against this dematerialization many scholars have insisted on the materiality of the sea, and on how capitalism in practice makes use of and changes the sea. In this article, I argue that Harry Martinson in his modernist travelogues Resor utan mål and Kap Farväl! depicts the materiality of the sea as part of a wider critique against industrial capitalism. Martinson does this by depicting the fluid geography of the sea as well as the status of work on the ship. By reading the travelogues in a specifically maritime context they stand out as important meditations on the relationship between capitalism and the ocean.