Aquatic Thinking in a Fluid Age

Dates: 18 April 2024, 25 April 2024, 2 May 2024, 16 May 2024, 23 May 2024
Time: 15:30-17:30
Location: Radboud University Nijmegen
Instructors: Jeroen Boom (RUN), Laszlo Muntéan (RUN)
Contact: jeroen.boom@ru.nl & laszlo.muntean@ru.nl
Credits: 5 ECTS
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*This course if fully booked at the moment. 

In the wake of what Cecilia Chen, Janine Macleod, and Astrida Neimanis call 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 (Chen et al. 2013). 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 us to think beyond anthropocentric worldviews (Jensen 2017; Ten Bos 2009) or how a term like “leakiness” erodes the fixed borders between nature/culture (Neimanis 2017), 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 (Cox et al. 2020), 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, Stacy Alaimo, Gaston Bachelard, Cecilia Chen, Lilie Chouliaraki, Gilles Deleuze, Édouard Glissant, Melody Jue, Astrida Neimanis, and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev. After a more general introduction during our first session, the course will be structured around the following four metaphors: “flowing,” “buoyancy,” “streaming,” and “currents.”  

Schedule

1. Introduction (18 Apr, Jeroen Boom & László Munteán)

During this introductory session, we will outline some of the most important themes of this course and lay the theoretical foundation for the rest of the weeks.

2. Flowing (25 Apr, Jeroen Boom)

In this session, we will examine the notion of “flowing” as a metaphor or trope in the visualization of border regimes and refugee crossings. We will discuss the dehumanization that occurs when associating the movements of human bodies with the movements of water – resulting in what Joseph Pugliese calls “bodies of water” or Liisa H. Malkki terms a “sea of humanity” – but we will also go against the flow and explore how a range of essay films use visual frictions to expose and make felt the disruptive experience of migration and violence against refugees.

3. Buoyancy (2 May, László Munteán & Ali Shobeiri)

One is never fully afloat in water but continually strives to remain one: buoyancy is a state in which the body, both internally and externally, capitulates to its environs: it becomes it. It is this enmeshment that turns buoyancy into a corporeal, as well as an existential, state. In this session, we’ll dive into this phenomenon through its manifestations in, among others, philosophy and photography.

4. Streaming (16 May, Niels Niessen)

In this session, we will take the notion of “streaming” as a metaphor for what happens to everyday life in our digitizing age, in which life accelerates and dividualizes. What are the frictions inherent to our streaming condition, personally and ecologically? Engaging this question, we will explore the connection between our everyday technology use to the deep-sea-mining of minerals like lithium and cobalt that go into phone and car batteries.

5. Currents (23 May, Justine M. Bakker)

More information will follow soon.

Symposium

The course will be concluded by the two-day symposium Sea Mediations: Hydro-Criticism and Tidal Thinking, with keynotes by, among others, Melody Jue, Mekhala Dave, Nicole Starosielski, and Yuriko Furuhata. This event will take place on the 30^th and 31^st of May 2024 at the University of Amsterdam, more information will follow soon.

Assignment

For students wanting to obtain the credits of 5 ECTS for this course, we will ask you to write a research paper or submit a more creative assignment.

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