In Gramsci at Sea, author Sharad Chari asks how the environmental crisis of the oceans is linked to legacies of capitalism and imperialism across and within the oceans. Chari reads Antonio Gramsci as a thinker of the oceanic crisis, drawing on the philosopher’s prison notes and questions concerning waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Here, Chari is joined in conversation with Charne Lavery, Melissa Marschke, and Philippe Le Billon.


Sharad Chari is associate professor of geography and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Gramsci at Sea and Fraternal Capital.

Charne Lavery is senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She is author of Writing Ocean Worlds.

Melissa Marschke is professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is author of Life, Fish and Mangroves.

Philippe Le Billon is professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Wars of Plunder.




Persons and works referenced:
-Fernando Coronil
-The Many-Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh
-Meg Samuelson, “Thinking with Sharks,” Australian Humanities Review
-Matthew Shutzer
-Gavin Capps
-Damien Hirst’s shark tanks
-Moby Dick by Herman Melville (character of Pip)
-Ellen Gallagher
-Katherine McKittrick
-Drexciya
-John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea
-Kamau Brathwaite’s “tidalectics”


More about the book:
Gramsci at Sea is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition may be read for free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Gramsci at Sea

Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is a book that asks why so many big bluefin tuna have vanished from the Atlantic Ocean. Author Jen Telesca notes that the term “red gold” has emerged out of the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands on the global market; for reference, in January 2019, a 613-pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold at market in Tokyo for an astounding record of $3.1 million US dollars. To research this book, Telesca gained unparalleled access to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (also known as ICCAT) to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned to it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. This interview between Telesca and editor Jason Weidemann was recorded in May 2020.

More about the book: http://z.umn.edu/redgold

A transcription of this conversation is available: z.umn.edu/t-redgold

Gramsci at Sea

University of Minnesota Press

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