Lukas Ley - Stirring up Marseille: managing “legacy sediments” in the Mediterranean
Lecture abstract
In the Bay of Marseille, a strongly polluted coastal body of water, dredging operations and beach replenishment produce oblique moments of "chemosociality" (Kirksey 2020). Coastal fauna and flora as well as humans come into contact with chemically contaminated sediment stirred up in the context of harbor extensions, coastal maintenance, and urban development.
As Faget (2011:295) poignantly observed, nothing about the beauty of Marseille’s shoreline can alert the urban flaneur to the chemical danger of the wave. How do governments and civil actors respond to and navigate this invisible ambient pollution enabled by mobile sediment? As Marseille and its seaport are drifting apart geographically and culturally, pollution
governance unevenly distributes the effects of toxic risk, banning ecological damage to offshore spaces while protecting urban littorals. By discussing ethnographic findings from ongoing research with coastal engineers and swimming clubs in Marseille, I show how marine pollution is rendered intelligible and managed through scientific categories (turbidity or toxicity)
and bodily experience (smell or touch). How do these registers differ and where do they also coalesce to make sense of the nongovernability of ocean sediments? The talk fosters new ways of thinking about and researching geologic beings and how they enact global environmental futures.