Epistemology

Geopolitics

Environmental ethics

Government (linguistics)

Political science

Politics

Sociology

Linguistics

Biopower

Philosophy

Political Geography

The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is creating a new understanding of the world ocean. With a vast and heterogeneous network of sensors, it converts the ocean's properties into flows of information, creating a "data double" of a dynamic sea. This view of the ocean underlies not only international geopolitics but also more broadly emergent modes of government. This paper analyzes changing strategies for governing global ocean observations to better understand the shifting coconstitution of nature, technology, and politics. In particular, I inquire into the GOOS's recent developments, which indicate a new conception of the ocean as a space of potentiality. I argue that this emergent understanding poses problems for our conventional political analytics, particularly that of biopolitics. To account for this shift, I draw on and extend Elizabeth Povinelli's offering of geontopolitics, which identifies a departure from the fundamental distinctions between life and nonlife made by biopolitics, seeing instead t...

A sea of potential: The politics of global ocean observations