IN SEARCH OF CHANGED CLIMATES

Abstract

In postcolonial studies, national and indigenous communities are often partly framed in relation to the relatively stable, enduring space of the land. As we move into more amphibious or aerial realms, however, questions about these frameworks emerge. Is there a space indicated by water and climate? Do the spaces of water and climate designate particular socialities (such as the nation), as the land often has? If any concept and practice of community requires some kind of permanence and stability, how are possible communities imaginatively linked to the disruptive but also cyclical temporalities of water and weather? In discussing these questions in this essay, I trace the shifting shapes and pathways of water and weather conditions in recent literature from Hawai‘i. I find that Gary Pak, in his short story ‘Language of the Geckos’, theorizes a history of trans-Pacific US economic and military expansion and marginalization of indigenous Hawaiian water regimes, as well as the emergence of a new kind of sociality among human and non-human characters, through tracing the movements and shifting shapes of water. I argue that it is through confronting the methodological problems that water presents for knowledge (specifically, issues of time and space) that Pak is able to build modes of propelling knowledge towards changed future possibilities of existence.