Aboard the ‘Commonist Lifeboat’
Metaphor, custom, materiality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13009010 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Antje Scharenberg (0000-0002-2349-4838, University of Southampton, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 169-175 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-13 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Constitutionalism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2045-3817 • E-ISSN: 2045-3825 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s2045381725100075 |
| OpenAlex | W4413177431 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
In From Survival Cannibalism to Climate Politics (2025) as well as in Law and Politics from the Sea (2024) Mann proposes the ‘commonist lifeboat’ as a political metaphor for the age of climate change. This response to Itamar Mann’s re-reading of Regina vs. Dudley and Stephens proposes a materialist reading of his political theory of the ‘commonist lifeboat’, arguing that the lifeboat may be a metaphorical and practical site from which alternatives to our current ways of doing and thinking about politics in times of climate crisis might emerge. The text brings Mann’s lifeboat into conversation with my own and other scholars’ work on radical vessels – historical and contemporary – in order to demonstrate and expand its analytical capacity as a more-than-metaphorical term. Building on Mann’s use of the lifeboat as a metaphor and a site of maritime custom , I propose to understand the ‘commonist lifeboat’ also as a material container that operates in a specific material environment: the sea. I argue that a focus on the materiality of the sea and of the lifeboat may point to political practice, community and customs yet to be invented , which may help us navigate the turbulent political environment of our time
Aesthetics · Art · Computer graphics (images · Linguistics · Materiality (auditing · Metaphor · Computer Science · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
Plato and the Ship of State
Turbulent Waters in Three Parts
Criminalizing solidarity
From survival cannibalism to climate politics
Rebel spirits at sea
Weaponizing rescue
The Slave Ship
Vessels of Solidarity
The Many-Headed Hydra
Ocean activism
Law and politics from the sea
Of Other Spaces
The Sea in Sea Rescue
Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces
| Highly cited | No |
|---|