Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In From Survival Cannibalism to Climate Politics (2025) as well as in Law and Politics from the Sea (2024) Mann proposes the ‘commonist lifeboat’ as a political metaphor for the age of climate change. This response to Itamar Mann’s re-reading of Regina vs. Dudley and Stephens proposes a materialist reading of his political theory of the ‘commonist lifeboat’, arguing that the lifeboat may be a metaphorical and practical site from which alternatives to our current ways of doing and thinking about politics in times of climate crisis might emerge. The text brings Mann’s lifeboat into conversation with my own and other scholars’ work on radical vessels – historical and contemporary – in order to demonstrate and expand its analytical capacity as a more-than-metaphorical term. Building on Mann’s use of the lifeboat as a metaphor and a site of maritime custom , I propose to understand the ‘commonist lifeboat’ also as a material container that operates in a specific material environment: the sea. I argue that a focus on the materiality of the sea and of the lifeboat may point to political practice, community and customs yet to be invented , which may help us navigate the turbulent political environment of our time.
Source: Global Constitutionalism
Author: Antje Scharenberg
Institution: University of Southampton
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
Funder: Universität St. Gallen
Award: G8902022231
OpenAlex ID: W4413177431