Aquatic Thinking in a Fluid Age

Dates: Semester 2, 2024 (weekly meetings on Thursdays, dates to be announced)
Location: Radboud University
Instructors: Jeroen Boom (RUN), Laszlo Muntéan (RUN)
Contact: jeroen.boom@ru.nl & laszlo.muntean@ru.nl
Credits: 5 ECTS

In the wake of what Cecilia Chen calls the “hydrological turn”, in this course, we reflect on the discursive function of water and how thinking with water can help to counter the solid assumptions of terrestrial epistemologies. We map out different aquatic metaphors and critically navigate the oceanic worlds that they evoke, celebrating their potential to unground earthly forms of knowledge while also reflecting on the dangers of their performative power. We ask, for example, how an adjective such as “amphibious” helps to think beyond anthropocentric worldviews or how a term like “leakiness” erodes the fixed borders between nature/culture, yet we also want to acknowledge the slipperiness of such words, asking how the watery metaphor of “flows” connects migration policies to a seamlessness that conceals the obstructions that refugees experience, or how the concept of “streams” hides the inherent frictions within digital platform infrastructures. We will discuss such watery wor(l)ds in aesthetic, political, forensic, and ecological contexts to start thinking about how their aquatic material resonance trickles into the ways we think about the realities they aim to describe.

We will engage with a maelstrom of theoretical works by, among others, Gaston Bachelard, Éduoard Glissant, Christina Sharpe, Astrida Neimanis, Steve Mentz, and Melody Jue; read oceanic fiction by Virginia Woolf, Jules Verne, and Deborah Levy; and watch hydrous films by Jacques Cousteau, Hito Steyerl, Jean Vigo, Forensic Oceanography, Lucile Hadžihalilović, and Mati Diop. Guest speakers will be announced soon.