The essay discusses the liquid spatiality that characterizes the activities of the pirate, the juridical liquid space that is created in his or her wake, and reactions to pirate activity that in various ways attempt to territorialize the open sea. The essay also considers the ways in which the activities of modern pirates affect the relationship between the juridical and the political. The focus is on le- gal, cultural, and political relationships between activities and spatialities, and in particular on the relationship between solid and liquid states. Although the perspective is mainly that of intellectual history, the essay also discusses some recent historical events, in particular the legal processes against the Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.
