Beyond Ethical Visibility: Rethinking Marine Life as Epistemic Figures in Posthumanism

Abstract

This article explores how marine organisms can be reconsidered as epistemic figures within posthumanist thought. While posthumanism has advanced significant critiques of anthropocentrism, it has often privileged terrestrial animals and land-based metaphors in its rethinking of human-nonhuman relations. By contrast, many oceanic lifeforms – such as corals and “Pinna nobilis” – have remained epistemologically marginalized, ethically invisible, and conceptually under-theorized. This paper challenges the dominant frameworks that overlook marine beings whose bodies, temporalities, and ecological functions do not easily lend themselves to anthropomorphic identification. Drawing on feminist materialisms, critical posthumanist theories, and marine humanities, the article proposes an expanded oceanic posthumanism that foregrounds the ontological opacity, multispecies entanglements, and sensory alterities of sea creatures. Rather than treating marine life as passive matter or solely conservation targets, this study positions them as methodological provocations, inviting alternative imaginaries and forms of knowledge beyond terrestrial and ocular-centric paradigms.