Etymologically, submarine can mean that one is located in the ocean, and therefore one is 'under'. But it also means that one is under the marine itself. Then where are you?
I think that the submarine provides an interesting perspective on the 'sub' or the 'under' in general, and perhaps allows one to complexify and tease out the various contradictions contained in the classification of 'sub'.
I'd say that between the general human awe of the vast sea and the nagging fear of what might be concealed beyond view the 'submarine' necessarily invokes both the conspiracy (the submarine base, the nuclear sub) and the mythological (kraken, atlantis). Under the sea is an area as much of fantasy and imaginings as anything else.
I think that sea monsters and mermaids might be an interesting place to look as far as submarine fantasies go. For literature, an obvious choice is Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Commodities, fetishes, souvenirs, relics, rubbish. What theories help us think about things? In this course we will read Victorian travelers on West African "fetish," Michael Taussig on his imagined cocaine museum, Susan Stewart on longing and souvenirs, Freud on shiny noses, Marx on tables, Annette Weiner on the similarities between gift and commodity exchange, Mary Douglas on dirt, D.W. Winnicott on string, and Arjun Appadurai on the idea of the social lives of things. The singularization of things, the ways in which history and memory are stored in real and imagined objects, the commodification of the human body, the animation of the inanimate, utopian recycling, gleaning, found objects as art and craft: we will consider a broad range of theoretical issues in our readings and in projects that put them to quirky use.
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Etymologically, submarine can mean that one is located in the ocean, and therefore one is 'under'. But it also means that one is under the marine itself. Then where are you?
I think that the submarine provides an interesting perspective on the 'sub' or the 'under' in general, and perhaps allows one to complexify and tease out the various contradictions contained in the classification of 'sub'.
obviously, sandwiches too.
I'd say that between the general human awe of the vast sea and the nagging fear of what might be concealed beyond view the 'submarine' necessarily invokes both the conspiracy (the submarine base, the nuclear sub) and the mythological (kraken, atlantis). Under the sea is an area as much of fantasy and imaginings as anything else.
--Evan (above)
submarine nationalism:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6927395.stm
I think that sea monsters and mermaids might be an interesting place to look as far as submarine fantasies go. For literature, an obvious choice is Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
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