• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

BODIES OF WATER ASTRIDA G. NEIMANIS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO JUNE 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-46008-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-46008-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. •*• Canada ABSTRACT This dissertation is an interdisciplinary exploration of the relational ontology and ethics suggested by our bodies of water. I argue that our primarily watery constitution is more than "biological fact," and is instead a fecund site for thinking through the matter and meaning of embodiment. To undertake this exploration, in chapter one I develop an embodied phenomenological practice called "rhizo-phenomenology," which emerges between Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Gilles Deleuze's rhizomatics. I illustrate how our bodies of water dismantle the ontological privilege of the discrete, individual human body, even as that seemingly discrete body needs to be acknowledged and accounted for. In chapter two, I further rework ontological understandings of embodiment through my proposal of the onto-logic of "amniotics." This bodily way of being emerges through a rhizo-phenomenological reading of Luce Irigaray's writing on watery bodies. The onto-logic of amniotics elucidates how bodies are interpermeated with, gestational of and (sexually) differentiated from one another. In chapter three I extend this onto-logic to other-than-human bodies by exploring evolutionary biology from a "molecular" perspective. Here I highlight what evolution can teach us about "naturecultures" and about sexual differentiation in relation to water. In chapter four these evolutionary explorations are extended into a rhizo-phenomenological study of becoming-cetacean, where I focus on how water serves as a topographical differentiator between various animal bodies, and in particular, human and whale bodies. In chapter five I lay out the ethological ethics made possible by this new understanding of bodies. I iv extend my analysis of naturecultural evolutions to examine hydrotechnologies as bodies of water with which we are also intertwined. Such technologization need not be denounced, but should be considered according to an onto-logic of amniotics. I propose that the cultivation of a radically embodied water commons can better support this onto- logic than the guarantee of the human right to water. Ultimately, a study of our bodies of water not only suggests new ontological paradigms, but also opens to an ethics of interbeing, i.e., an ethics of interpermeation with, gestation of and differentiation from the multitudinous other watery bodies with whom we share this planet. v BODIES OF WATER TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv INTRODUCTION We Live as Watery Bodies in a Watery World 1 I. What is a Body of Water? 1 II. Approaches, Confluences 15 III. The Chapters to Come 43 CHAPTER ONE Bodies of Water as Rhizo-Phenomena: In Theory and Practice 54 I. Introduction: Thinking About/As Bodies 54 II. How to Think (About) A Body of Water 65 (a) Molar Coagulations and Molecular Undercurrents 66 (b) Bodies of Water as Actual, Virtual and Intensive 80 III. How to Think (As) a Body of Water 87 (a) Intuiting the Molecular Body of Water 93 (b) "Sci-Phi" 99 (c) Description, "Symptomatology" and Becoming-Language 114 IV. Conclusion: Towards an Ethics oflnterbeing 121 CHAPTER TWO An Onto-Logic of Amniotics: Gestational, Interpermeating, Differenc/tiating 129 I. Introduction: Hydrological Cycles 129 II. Irigaray as Rhizomatic Phenomenologist 136 III. Water, Ambiguity and Sexual Difference 150 IV. (Sexual) Difference and Repetition 162 V. Sexual Difference, Sexual Reproduction and the Gestational 167 VI. The Onto-Logic of Amniotics 184 VI CHAPTER THREE Fishy Beginnings: Molecular Evolutionism and the Potentiality of Human Embodiment 199 I. Introduction: Fishy Beginnings 199 II. Evolution Stories 202 (a) Life on Land and Its Watery Debts 203 (b) "Molecular Evolutionism" 211 III. Fishy Beginnings, Or What Evolution Stories Can Teach Us About the Onto-Logic of Amniotics 224 (a) Gestation, Differenc/tiation and our Fishy Beginnings 224 (b) Go Fish: On Sex, Eggs and Evolution 233 (c) Interpermeation, Gestation and the Hydrological Highway 249 IV. Conclusions, or: What can Evolution Teach us About an Ethics of Interbeing? 258 CHAPTER FOUR Becoming-Cetacean: Whale-Bodiedness and Water, At the Borders of the Liveable 267 I. Introduction: Moving Below the Surface 267 II. Molecularity and Our Watery Animal Becomings 274 III. (Making) Whale Tracks 285 IV. Whale Encounters, Adrift at Sea 291 V. Upon and Within a Whale 301 VI. Conclusions, Aspirations, at the Borders of the Liveable 314 CHAPTER FIVE Listening, Responding: Water Crises, Common Bodies and an Ethics of Interbeing 320 I. Introduction: Amniotics and Ethological Ethics 320 II. Hydrotechnological Involutions 337 III. New Hydrological Technologies and Amniotic Imbalance 350 IV. On How to Respond 361 (a) The Human Right to Water. 363 (b) Water in Common 375 V. From No-Bodies to Common Bodies 380 VI. Conclusion: Who Has Standing to Be Heard? 391 vn CLOSURES, OPENINGS 399 NOTES 415 BIBLIOGRAPHY 468 Vlll INTRODUCTION We Live as Watery Bodies in a Watery World I. What is a Body of Water? Perhaps there is a glass of water on the table beside you. You pick it up, take a sip. This water will feed your blood and nourish your muscles, cradle your organs in safe proximity, and serve as vital conduit and communicator between your furthest flung bodily outposts. As this water enters you, it will also transform you in subtle or more significant ways. This water will carry you from thirst to satiation, and it will provide the necessary lubrication for all of your bodily morphogenetic endeavours: movement, growth, desire, relinquishment. But this glass of water will not remain yours for long. This water will inevitably leave you, spreading across your skin when you sweat, rolling down your cheeks when you cry, and expressing your ecstasy when you love. It will begin its journey back to the earth, or the sky, or the filtration plant, the next time you go to the bathroom. And, in all of these leave-takings, this water will carry small meanings and materialities of you with it. Which of your emotions will pass through your uterine membrane to the life that gestates within you? Which of your senses will become more acute as you trade slobbery kisses with your canine companion? Which of your thoughts will be registered and tracked by a pod of echolocating sperm whales deep below the surface and miles away, as you take a quick dip off the side of the boat to wake your 1 body? Which of your movements will be absorbed by the scratchy underbrush and the buzzing insects as you deliberately and determinedly trudge up the rocky path towards the summit, with your own perspiration hovering as a cloud of effort and potential around you? Indeed, this all begs the question: who, or what, is this "you"? Without this water you would not exist. You are a body of water. Just as you have taken this water from some other (animal, vegetable, geophysical, meteorological) body of water on this planet, you in turn will quite literally pass your water on to another body, and that body will enfold your watery traces within its own, transposing and translating them anew. In each passage, exchange or enfolding of this same glass of water, your body expresses an interconnection with other bodies of water, at the same time as these intervals of transcorporeality recognize the membrane of differentiation between your bodies as well. And, at the hinges of these membranes, a question always vibrates: what responsibility, what response, is called out in this zone of relationality? In the chapters and pages that follow, my principal aim is to contribute to our thinking on embodiment, and specifically, to address how our constitution as primarily watery bodies (that is, materially comprised primarily of water) is significant, meaningful and productive. The first questions posed by this dissertation are thus: what are our bodies of water? What does it mean to be a "body of water?" I ask these questions in order to see how, by thinking about our bodies as watery choreographies, we might come to understand the notion of "the body" in a new, or more nuanced, way.

Load more

  497

Copy Link