Shipping – An afterword

Abstract

ABSTRACT The -ship suffix in “kinship” and the seagoing “ship” are terms that describe forms of relation that bind and collect amid oceanic unboundedness and dispersal. This afterword proposes that shipping in sea parlance and shipping in fan culture (a speculative practice of forging connection between fictional characters beyond the bounds of their original media) share a constitutive commitment to imaginative and material provisioning, transportation, and the creation of surplus value. Shipping allows for generative possibility beyond the foreclosure of formal, terrestrial bounds.