An Ecocritical Look at Flint's Water Crisis and Afro-Gothic Liquidity

Abstract

Abstract In 2014, as a cost-saving measure, Flint, Michigan, switched its water supply to the Flint River — the unofficial toxic waste disposal site for meatpacking plants, car factories, and lumber and paper mills, as well as the city's depository of agricultural and urban runoff and untreated raw sewage. In what may be viewed as the Gothic trope of the “poisoned well,” the Flint water crisis has directly affected a mostly African American population where 45 percent of Flint's residents are living below the poverty line. This essay positions the Flint water crisis in conversation with artist Pope.L, who in 2017 created an installation/performance/marketplace in which he bottled the noxious water shuttled to Flint residents and sold it to willing buyers. I consider the aesthetics and performativity of Pope.L's Flint Water Project alongside the nautical world-building of Drexciya and the aquatic hybrid figures in Wangechi Mutu's work. This assembly offers a speculative approach to an Afro-Gothic liquidity through an understanding of black geophysics as an embodiment of alluvial monstrosities and aquatic refusals.