Fluid Water Inquiries: Subjects and Water—Water-Subjects

• In Event: Wild Thinking With Water: Dreams and Possibilities for Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Objectives
This is an examination of water as subject, as a productive onto-epistemological space. Inspired by Somerville’s (2014; 2016) work, recent exchanges between the organizers of this session, and by the ‘becoming’ of the Whanganui river as a legal subject, we offer a New Zealand theorisation of being with/by water as subjects, with the water-subject. We use philosophy as a method to theorise how being and becoming, of water, with water, by water spoils the ‘purity’ of anthropocentric clean-green-New Zealand onto-epistemological subject positionings, and reconceptualise rights, responsibilities and liabilities of ‘subjects’, when water is water and also a subject.

Theory
The onto-epistemological frames and conceptual implications of water-subject are investigated in a theoretically fluid entanglement of the human or post-human ‘I’ (Somerville, 2016). Calling into question what it means for water to have subjectivity, water traits, behaviours, responses, leads to our questioning of subjective water-as-data implications for qualitative methods of inquiry. We take a Foucauldian perspective on matter, power and governmentality, as Lemke (2014) does in relation to ‘thing-hood’. Here, water-subjectivities evoke boundaries between what is and what is not given legal-moral status, and what becomes either elevated as socially relevant, or relegated, as ‘thing’. Might we need new theoretical frameworks of water-subject ‘doings’ or ‘beings’, or the effects and affects of fluidities of water-subject positionings? Human subjects act on water, yet water is constantly shifting, as in Heraclitus’ Panta Rhei: ‘everything flows’, changes. We theorise not to tame water, nor to exploit it, but to humbly and fluidly wade through a watery space, questioning what it means to meet, or be, as subjects and water, or a water-subject.

Methods
We acknowledge our positioning, as pakeha (non-Maori) thinkers, in our humble investigation of philosophical ontological positionings. We are mindful that it is not and never can be our place to represent what they might mean for indigenous Maori in New Zealand. Our perspectives are expressed here only to the extent that we can maintain our own ethical and respectful relationships with the water, with the support and guidance of our indigenous philosopher colleagues. We situate this inquiry within new epistemologies of and with water (Somerville, 2014). Water does not provide normative structures; but it offers the potential for fluid methodologies that diversify, do seemingly nothing, in or on time, serene, pure and innocent – or dark, dangerous, and wild. Water is an element with a life-giving force; water gives power; exerts power, and has now been given its own legal power. Epistemologies of and with water are linked closely with Western and Indigenous cultures and spirituality. Water is our mode of inquiry.

Significance
Water represents movement, Panta Rhei, nothing remains the same, even within the same body of water. Traversing boundaries of subject – water relations, as has occurred in the New Zealand case of the Whanganui river, pushes our methodological expectations for new water-subject fluidities. Like water, our theorisations are fluid, grounded in temporal transpositions of endangered methodological curiosity and Western guilt, in the Anthropocene, through water.

Authors

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland

• Sonja Arndt, University of Waikato