This book investigates the ways in which human reconnection with the ocean and coast is a desire and bid for a reconnection with human sensory experience on Earth. In seeking to examine the sensory, temporal and spiritual human experience of the ocean and coast, as well as the cultural dimensions of those experiences, it seeks to offer deep insight into what it really means to ‘rehumanize’ ocean and heritage management in Africa, and by extension, the world. The author proposes that rehumanization involves deepening emerging concepts of human-nature interaction; perceiving nature as consisting not only of potentially sentient entities and qualities, but considering that these have their own, not yet fully discernible logics and processes. This book also suggests that the interaction between humans and nature – specifically the ocean – be considered as a locus for a radical decolonization of identity in Africa, since it involves consideration of African connection with the ocean, not via the violent processes of slavery and colonization but via processes of adaptation and co-resilience with nature.
