"Oceanic Becoming reflects on the immersive poetics of oceanic becoming that flow from the influence of the Pacific and surrounding areas. Reading the Pacific as a site of peril and promise, Rob Wilson draws on blue humanities and worlding techniques to connect cities to the oceans that sustain and support them. Through literary analysis and critique of texts that draw on the Pacific's influence and address life along the Pacific Rim, Wilson asks readers to reconceptualize the ocean in a world that is increasingly threatened by late capitalism and production chains. This reworlding shifts thinking about globalization toward the local, moving between city and region, world and globe, to reveal an occluded urban-planetary nexus of transience, motion, and affect in the Anthropocene"--
From disappearing coral reefs and ocean acidification to floating great garbage patches, the Pacific Ocean is an ever-present reminder of the Anthropocene. In Oceanic Becoming, Rob Wilson demonstrates that in the midst of the planetary crises the Pacific now faces, it must be understood as interconnected to the other oceans. Wilson frames this interconnection as Oceania, reconceiving the world oceans as tied to sites of urban dwelling and life sustenancefrom Boston to Brisbanethat are increasingly threatened by late capitalism. Confronting these threats, Wilson argues, requires a project he theorizes as worldinga process of world-making and world-remaking across Oceania that would create new forms of belonging and connection at local, regional, and transnational levels. Wilson shows how Oceania is not just a site of peril but one charged with emergent literary and social formations that can provide the basis for new solidarities, futures, and ecologies.
Outline the environmental crises the worlds oceans currently face, Rob Wilson theorizes a practice of worlding, which would build upon existing social ties to the ocean that would provide the basis for new forms of belonging and ecological futures.