The Cenote as Material Feminist Figuration: From the Holocene to the Halocline

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cenotes are naturally occurring freshwater sinkholes that are formed when limestone bedrock erodes, exposing subterranean water. They are visually striking: cavernous, circular holes in the ground that drop down to the shimmer of bright blue water. Building on the genealogy of feminist figures, this article argues that cenotes are rich feminist figurations that can assist us in thinking through the complexities of ecological crises in the Anthropocene. I utilise scuba diving in cenotes as a method of bodily enquiry, drawing on fieldwork conducted at eight cenotes in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico to demonstrate how thinking with the rich material-discursive composition of cenotes can question and undermine normative approaches to the Anthropocene. Cenotes are spaces of rupture and affective possibility, transitional zones that privilege fluidity over categorisation. By analysing cenotes and their unique hydro-geological formations as a distinctly feminist figuration, I argue that the binary onto-epistemologies implicit in the Anthropocene can be challenged and re-thought through the radical liminality of the cenote. I propose that thinking-with cenotes engenders an understanding of what I call a hydro-geologic corporeality and subjectivity that emphasises the liminal boundaries between the body (bios), the water (hydro), and the geologic (geos).