Questioning “terrestrial Thinking” and Western Epistemology in Derek Walcott’s “the Sea Is History”: a Blue Humanities Perspective
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Blue Humanities emphasises moving away solely from ‘terrestrial thinking’, to go beyond “fixities and definites” (to use a phrase from Coleridge), asserting how the fluidity of water/seas makes one have a broader epistemological purview in understanding human cultures and endeavours. Along with other literary texts dealing with sea, Derek Walcott’s “The Sea is History” is used as an illustrative example to explore the nuances of Blue Humanities as the poet uses the “grey vault” of the seas to unlock the “tribal memory’ of the Caribbeans to counter Western hegemonic discourses and to rewrite the history from Black perspective. In doing so, Walcott questions the “fixities” of Western epistemological paradigms and champions the ‘fluidity’ of water/seas to construct a paradigm of Caribbean sensibilities needed to make the world more inclusive and not just suffer from the ‘solitude’ (Marquez) that the colonised suffered from.
Authors: Deb Dulal Halder, Aareena Nazneen
Institutions: University of Delhi, Integral University
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7165897142