Black Mediterranean hauntings: border violence, burial, and anti-racist care work in Strange Fish.
This article explores forms of haunting that shape lives and livelihoods in the Mediterranean, recognising the sea as a site of movement, labour, and death. The Mediterranean is now widely understood as a kind of deathscape, as people on the move from former European colonies risk and lose their liv...
| Publicado en: | Cultural Studies Vol. 39; no. 6; pp. 887 - 912 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Nov2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=188670721&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 188670721 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09502386 05G jtl: Cultural Studies issn: 09502386 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2025 vid: 39 iid: 6 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 188670721 10.1080/09502386.2025.2538523 ppf: 887 ppct: 25 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 405KB tig: atl: Black Mediterranean hauntings: border violence, burial, and anti-racist care work in Strange Fish. aug: au: Paynter, Eleanor affil: Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA su: Interment Immigrants Precarious employment Social justice Mediterranean Region sug: subj: Mediterranean Region Interment Immigrants Precarious employment Social justice keyword: Black Mediterranean documentary haunting labour migration sea ab: This article explores forms of haunting that shape lives and livelihoods in the Mediterranean, recognising the sea as a site of movement, labour, and death. The Mediterranean is now widely understood as a kind of deathscape, as people on the move from former European colonies risk and lose their lives en route to Europe. Yet the production of migrant death – its materiality and simultaneous spectacle and invisibility – is not simply a consequence of harsh border policies. Here, I trace how migrant death in the Mediterranean is a crucial part of the racialized mechanisms that maintain a precarious labour force within Europe and transform livelihoods across Mediterranean shores. Engaging the Black Mediterranean as a site of haunting, I centre the relationship between haunting and care in a reading of the 2018 documentary Strange Fish (dir. Giulia Bertoluzzi), which describes how the production of death in the Central Mediterranean has transformed the labour of fishermen in Zarzis, Tunisia, who have been rescuing migrants and burying the dead since the early 2000s. Writing as an 'implicated subject' (Rothberg) who has spent extended time in Italy with people who have survived the sea crossing, I read the film both in terms of the unfolding history it documents, as well as through the visual and sonic elements it employs to illustrate these entangled forms of care and labour. In solidarity with people on the move, I argue that, as necropolitical border regimes threaten to upend notions of the refugee and related issues of rights and justice, it is crucial to understand and engage death at sea not strictly as a migration issue, but as a quotidian reality entangled in questions of labour and social justice on all shores of the Mediterranean. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Cultural Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Cultural Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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