Abstract
This article draws on interview data and insights from environmental studies and somatic therapy to argue for the significance of thinking ‘with rivers’ in order to reaffirm human and nonhuman entanglements in the current challenges presented by anthropogenic devastation. River microbial communities are unintelligible and complex entities due to their unclear origin and continuous flow downstream. The account of one environmental scientist is presented to consider how the metaphors of movement used in the riverine context assist in exploring the complicated dynamics of fluid communities facing constantly changing environments I call ‘microbial rivers’. A pollution incident affecting a UK river, where microbial communities responded by growing in number and activity, further illustrates the intersection of communities and ecosystems in their adaptation to troubling human interventions. Engaging with somatic understandings of trauma, this article proposes thinking with flow as a possibility to reimagine the capacity for renewal when experiencing debilitating adversities, thus countering apocalyptic responses of immobility in the face of environmental destruction and inviting novel opportunities for growth for human and nonhuman communities.
Highlights
Water ImaginationsThe existence of life is profoundly interconnected with the water element; all life on earth relies on water for its survival (Harding & Margulis, 2010; Hawke, 2012)
This article draws on interview data and insights from environmental studies and somatic therapy to argue for the significance of thinking ‘with rivers’ in order to reaffirm human and nonhuman entanglements in the current challenges presented by anthropogenic devastation
If geosocialities aside rocks include water, as ‘the term cannot be read as geos = rocks and social = people’ (Ibid: 160), in this article I propose that rivers, in particular, are never only about water but are entangled with pollutants, sediments and soils as well as the communities they convey
Summary
The existence of life is profoundly interconnected with the water element; all life on earth relies on water for its survival (Harding & Margulis, 2010; Hawke, 2012). I consider these propositions useful in exploring the entanglements with river microbes and other fluvial communities as a way to advance a decentring of the human that allows for more attentive and respectful relations with other life forms For this purpose, I adopt the notion of geosocialities as ‘the entangled relations of the earth and biologic beings’, to think about the materiality of the earth in which humans and nonhumans live (Pálsson & Swanson, 2016: 150). It is in this sense that flowing, geosocial rivers can assist in contributing to the growing project advanced in the humanities and social sciences to decentre the human from its protagonist role in the story of life This shift can, in turn, allow for the establishment of novel relationships with nonhuman rivers, microbial communities and other life forms, necessary to tackle the current anthropogenic destruction affecting human and nonhuman populations. Aligning with this contextuality of flows and rivers, I propose a singular perspective from an environmental scientist and elaborate on how a polluting incident, occurred in a specific river, had particular ecosystem implications for resilience and destruction that raise the question: how to engage with rivers in conscientious modalities and how does the river speak?
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