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The article follows the ongoing transformation of genomic science into an industry – dedicated to the systematic extraction, abstraction and manipulation of genetic material – and considers the new types of oceanic exploration that genomic research both presupposes and fosters. We argue that emergent practices of ocean bioprospecting are sparking new ways of thinking, living and exploiting marine ecosystems as «genomic mines». We chart the recent history of genomic bioprospecting operations in the global ocean – focusing on the Sorcerer II expedition (2004-2006) and the Tara Oceans project (2009-2013) – and recount the rise of the «ocean genome» as an object of knowledge and a target of extractivist practices. Finally, we theorize the peculiar global mobility of bioprospecting vessels as constituting a practice of social construction of the ocean: a peculiar form of scientific navigation, which is already engendering new social uses of marine biodiversity, new strategies of capital accumulation, as well as innovative representations of ocean ecosystems. L'articolo traccia la trasformazione della genomica in un'industria dedicata all’estrazione, astrazione e manipolazione di materiale genetico e si sofferma sui nuovi tipi di esplorazione oceanica che quest’industria presuppone e promuove. Ci soffermiamo in particolare sulla storia recente delle spedizioni scientifiche di bioprospezione in alto mare, concentrando la nostra attenzione sulle vicende della Sorcerer II e della Tara Oceans, ed evidenziando l’avvento dell’ocean genome come oggetto di studio e target estrattivo. Infine, l’articolo interpreta la mobilità delle navi scientifiche impiegate nel campionamento genomico e meta-genomico come una praxis nautica sui generis: una forma di navigazione estrattiva che sta già generando nuovi usi degli spazi marini, nuove strategie di accumulazione e nuove rappresentazioni degli spazi oceanici. Le pratiche di bioprospezione oceanica stimolano nuovi modi di pensare, esperienziare ed estrarre valore dalle profondità marine.

Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, Vol 17 (2010): Culture and Crisis

This thesis has as its subject piracy and its relation to Empire. Through a methodological approach, it investigates the ways in which different discourses, throughout modernity, have contributed to the construction of a ‘pirate legend’ that continue to animate our present. The first part of the dissertation is dedicated to a study of the pirate figure as it appears in the context of various global orders from antiquity until the early eighteenth century. In this context, I argue that the suppression of piracy was a constitutive moment in the early history of the world market. The second part follows the ways in which the spectre of eighteenth century piracy has continued to haunt modern international law, well after the dawn of the classic ‘golden age of piracy’. I argue that the evocation of the ‘pirate analogy’ has played an important role in: the history of nineteenth European imperialism, in the escalation to total war in the twentieth century, and today in the context of the war on terror. The aim is to systematically contextualize how and why particular individuals and groups were perceived and described as ‘piratical’ in a certain historical and geographical context. In this way, it becomes possible to consider the significant historical continuities that underlie different discourses that, throughout history, have made use of the concept of ‘the pirate’; but also, it enables to follow the ways in which the meaning of that same concept changed in passing from one global order to another. There is a sense in which pirates have always been with us and yet, beneath the superficial timelessness of the subject, we discover fundamental discontinuities, sudden turnarounds, discursive shifts that transform the meaning of what a pirate is supposed to be.