Sealskins, Scales and Silken Hair: Transformability as Resistance in Merfolk Literature

Troxler, Marion Irena (17 June 2024). Sealskins, Scales and Silken Hair: Transformability as Resistance in Merfolk Literature (Unpublished). In: EASLCE 2024: “Shifting Shores: Transition and Transformation in/on the Literary Beach”. Perpignan, France. 17.06-20.06.2024.

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In this contribution, hydro-protean figures such as mermaids and selkies will be considered
through the lens of littoral studies, highlighting the transformative capacities of both the
imaginary creature and the beach. Expressing and embodying continuous shifting and flowing,
they both resist clear boundaries and categorisation. As a “liminal zone,” the beach is
destabilising in both the material and metaphorical sense, a fluctuating threshold “between land
and the sea, as well as nature and culture” (Kluwick and Richter 2015). Similarly, the hybridity
of mermaids (fish-human) and selkies (seal-human) challenges hegemonic dualisms such as
nature/culture and animal/human since they are neither and both simultaneously. As such,
both the beach and merfolk can serve as a model for recognising “a complex, interacting pattern
of both continuity and difference” which resists the domination inherent in colonial, capitalist
and patriarchal power structures (Plumwood 1993). Thinking with the littoral and with merfolk
means considering fluidity, transformation and connection as a basis rather than an alternative
for life on a multi-species planet. To illustrate my argument, I will demonstrate how Lagoon by
Nnedi Okorafor (2014) combines littoral zones, protean entities and parallel narratives with
multiple focalisers to create an Africanfuturist vision of entangled multi-species survival.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of English Languages and Literatures 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of English Languages and Literatures > Modern English Literature
Graduate School:	Graduate School Gender Studies
UniBE Contributor:	Troxler, Marion Irena
Subjects:	800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 820 English & Old English literatures 400 Language > 420 English & Old English languages 800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism
Language:	English
Submitter:	Marion Irena Troxler
Date Deposited:	21 Jun 2024 15:47
Last Modified:	21 Jun 2024 15:47
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/197996