The Smooth and the Striated Sea: Shipyards Industry Affecting Marine Environment

This paper draws on the distinction between smooth and striated spaces by Deleuze and Guattari to illustrate how ship manufacturing affects marine environment and viceversa. Indeed, as the sea is mostly unexplored and relatively unreachable by human activity, it is taken as an example of “plan of immanence” by the two philosophers, offering the image of an unorganized and un-appropriated territory – reflecting its smoothness –, and thus it stands as a reserve for potential becoming of the world, surrounding in a tangent manner modern society achievements. However, on the other hand, conversely the sea has also been progressively enveloped and manipulated – and thus striated – by development of navigation and expansion of shipbuilding as the “associated milieu” of ships and their routes. Accordingly, it can be said that the design and the affordances of vessels, along with the state of seamanship, could be read as a way to fold, dominate and exploit the sea. Including the transfiguration of coastal areas by harbour ports construction, without which the ships would not exist. Adopting the STS “transcalar” framework to the study of the “heterogeneous engineering” of ship construction then, it could be observed how humans, material components, marine flora and fauna, waves, currents and seabed are associated together to form a durable ensemble, which lastly manifest itself in the adapt maritime mean of transport. And how evolutions in these “naturalcultural” assemblages “enroll” and “translate” such individual components in new networked arrangements, turning virtual potentialities of smooth sea into actual elements of striated marine environment. In particular, the example of luxury yachts is introduced, as they are being built in form of sophisticated customized prototypes, enriched with fancy features and devices which significantly influence navigation, and by this they represent essential propellers for technological advancement in broader "blue economy".