Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River by Andrew Alan Johnson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River by Andrew Alan Johnson Judith Bovensiepen Andrew Alan Johnson. Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 208 pp. The Mekong River, which divides Thailand and Laos, runs through six countries. Life along the river has changed drastically in recent years due to—among other factors—the construction of a dam in China that has led to fluctuations in water levels. Mekong Dreaming explores the conflicts and contradictions of living along a changing river, paying special attention to both the generative power of non-humans and the ways those living along the river confront the uncertainties that recent changes have generated. Drawing on fieldwork in the town of Ban Beuk (a pseudonym), Andrew Alan Johnson provides an insightful examination not just of how marginalized communities respond to the uncertainties of environmental change but also how the unknown can itself generate new possibilities. Located in Isan (the north-eastern, Lao-speaking part of Thailand), Ban Beuk is a fishing, border, and migrant town. Since the construction of the dam, the river has started to act "against nature" (1), as one of Johnson's friends describes it. The future is uncertain as the changing river embodies two very different potentialities in people's imagination: utopian and apocalyptic. For those living along its banks, the river has the potential to usher in prosperity as much as it is associated with the potential for environmental, economic, and political catastrophe. Johnson explores how human, nonhuman, and inhuman relations are affected by the infrastructural changes that have taken place in recent years—the inhuman here referring to "those beings whose subject position is uninhabitable or unlocatable" (7). In doing so, the author shows how humans and non-humans are entangled as well as how infrastructure itself can appear as an unknown, occult force. "From the vantage point of Ban Beuk, dams and spirits are [End Page 499] both occult forces in that their power stems from an unseen place. What these forces say (in dreams or otherwise) and how they operate is unclear" (6). The uncertainty that people face derives its potency precisely from the fact that so many aspects of the present and future are unknown. Through this emphasis on the potency of uncertainty, Johnson intervenes in key contemporary debates in anthropology, drawing together recent work on doubt and the unknown (e.g., Bubandt, Siegel) with discussions of the potentiality of the Anthropocene and non-human others (e.g., Latour, Tsing, Haraway). Taking an unexpected detour via the "weird fiction" of H.P. Lovecraft, Johnson's Mekong Dreaming is part of a growing trend to experiment with what a speculative realist anthropological analysis might look like. Starting with the basic premise of object-oriented ontology that reality is a state of unknowing (17), the goal is not to reconcile different perspectives on a shared reality but to embrace the fact that objects can never be fully perceived. Following Graham Harman, the "weird" as "a reality that eludes capture" (17) is a central aspect of Johnson's analysis. While the author does not set out to delineate a new field, in the spirit of his approach, one might say that "weird anthropology" would be one that would take this condition of unknowability as a starting point. As Johnson's analysis and method of "instrumental weirdism" (17) exemplify, such an approach would analyze the elusive and invisible potency of the unknown without trying to resolve the inherent tensions of a reality that eludes capture. Like the best works of writing, the theoretical outlook is reflected in both the style and structure of the book. Johnson takes us on a dream-like journey of life along an unstable river that has grown out of sync. An ominous disquiet runs throughout the chapters, as we learn in Chapter 1 about the contradictions of the river, which both enables flow and separates people as a national border. However, this river border is also "skeptical" (38), because it does not rely on righteous power—like the power of the mandala that underlies the present-day nation-state—but rather it is exposed to...