This paper proposes the southern Indian Ocean as a region of inquiry. Given the less predictable behavior of the monsoon in the southern Indian Ocean, this part of the ‘cradle of globalization’ is far less well represented in historical and imaginary accounts than the northern regions. Yet, it is gaining new significance as the site of deepsea mining, exploration, and shifting currents due to melting Antarctic ice. The southern Indian ocean is exemplary of ‘the oceanic South’ (Samuelson and Lavery), which overlaps the greater proportion of ocean to land in the Southern Hemisphere with the socioeconomic character of ‘the global South’. The south Atlantic has been recently theorized as ‘the global South Atlantic’ by Kerry Bystrom and Joseph Slaughter, and the south Pacific has long been recognized as a space of troubled exploration and violent externalization. This paper will centre the southern Indian Ocean through a reading of Dan Sleigh’s Islands.

For further reading:

Meg Samuelson, Charne Lavery; The Oceanic South. English Language Notes 1 April 2019; 57 (1): 37–50. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-7309666