Paper short abstract:

Drawing on popular outlooks on humanity and its relationship to the sea, I navigate the current nautical imagination of the nation in Greece, as its cosmos comprises of cosmopolitans, citizens, and non-citizens, and non-human actors, such as pipelines, platforms, and permanent infrastructures.

Paper long abstract:

In 2021 the Greek state will celebrate two centuries of national independence. The 1821 uprising had unmistakable maritime marks. Ιts material backbone was a merchant fleet that turned military overnight, and the decisive moment a sea-battle between the west and the Ottomans. In these centuries, the Greek merchant fleet became the largest in the world, with state support. State schools prepare staff for the maritime industry, while shipowners control the powerful football clubs and media. Nationalist historiography attributes the rise of the nautical nation to the "demonion" of its sea people, a combination of skills and cosmopolitan dexterity. For some, the "demonion" encapsulated the ability to treat dangerous and illicit flows of materials, which began with the iconic blowing up of an Ottoman flagship by the ship merchant Kanaris.

Against this background, I will focus on recent transformations of the nautical imagi-nation caused by humanitarian, solidarity-oriented, and ecological movements. I explore emergent maritime grassroots mobilizations, -the ships to Gaza, the protest against the hydrolysis of Syrian chemical weapons, and the migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean-, and analyze them as challenges to the nautical imagi-nation, and in particular to the idea of the controlled risky flows at its heart. Drawing on popular outlooks in regards to humanity and its relationship to the sea, I navigate the current undoing and re-making of the nautical imagination of the nation, as its cosmos comprises of cosmopolitans, citizens, and non-citizens, but also and mainly other non-human actors, such as pipelines, platforms, and permanent infrastructures.