Page - 46 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

46 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Arnd Schneider | An anthropology of sea voyage for most immigrants the sea voyage represents transit par excellence; it is thus the rite of pas- sage which lies in-between the old and the new. Although there might be a certain danger to overemphasize the transitory nature of this event, it is precisely in the experience of transatlantic sea travel (and its later narration and use in life histories) that the meaning of the in-between, and its heterotopic value12 arguably are constituted and must be sought through ethnography and oral history. This is true both for the individual experience, but also, historically speaking, for the socially and culturally constitutive work of large-scale migratory movements (based on economic and political regimes of unequal exchange and forced labour, as for instance in the the slave trade). As is well documented, these migrations resulted in new socio-cultural forma- tions, such as the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Gilroy 1991), new types of political consciousness among seafarers (Linebaugh/Rediker 2000), and new ethnically refracted or hybrid forms of belonging and identity onboard and onland – a kind of “rowdy cosmopolitanism’, as Anna Tsing has called it, discernible also in shipboard descriptions contained in the great novels of the time, Moby Dick (Melville 1851) foremost (Tsing 2012: 56-61). Moreover, much like Victor Turner had attested for rituals (Turner 1969), the liminal sta- tus of the journey affords a view into another world possible, and constitutes itself a transitory world of temporary rebellion with the downside turned up and vice versa, such as when a five-year old girl from the poor lower deck class glimpses the glamour and amusement of the restaurant and ballroom of the first class, or the bohemian Armenian traveller (see below) finds a congenial group of friends and nurtures his passion for the cinema, or the rebellious young woman getting of age on the boat finds the love of her life which sets her on course for a busi- 12 for ships as heterotopias, see famously foucault (1997). Fig. 2. The travel trunk of Nélida Cimino’s family. Photo: Arnd Schneider, 2014.