Salmon-costumed
One more…the review hosted by LSE blogs:
In Underflows, Cleo Wölfle Hazard invites us into the hydrological, cultural and epistemological dynamics of both public imaginaries of water and water-related networks as well as the researcher relationships and ‘straight science’ norms that excise affect, care and kinship from the processes of knowledge production and communication. In doing so, he unpacks the settler-colonial land relations that shape water imaginaries and, by extension, water governance throughout the increasingly drought-stricken, dammed and extracted west coast of the US, tying in critiques and analysis with a queer and trans orientation to the world.
Or, to put it less flatteringly, attaching the absurd and decadent pseudo-politics of “trans” to a real and terrible ecological disaster. There is plenty to say about the drought-stricken, dammed and extracted western US (the reviewer errs in saying west coast, because the damming is mostly inland), but a connection to “a queer and trans orientation to the world” is decidedly not one of them.
Through the story of a salmon-costumed confessional performance art project undertaken by the author and his collaborator and partner July Hazard, we glimpse what even the ‘straight’ scientists working within the disciplinary bounds and normative scripts of their field might gain from ‘queering’ or ‘transing’ science in a way that makes room for affect, care and interspecies kinship.
Do we though? Do we glimpse that? Somehow I doubt it.
I don’t usually use this kind of language, but what the actual fuck is this??
And this could have two undesirable results:
(1) Good people think: Well, transqueer and caring about ecological disaster are all the same thing, and I support caring about ecological disaster, so I need to support transqueer demands as well;
(2) Other good people think: What is this transqueer bullshit? The ecological concerns are tied to transqueer bullshit, so presumably they are equally made-up and stupid.
Following the link leads one into a wider expanse of the above swamp; potentially crockodile (as in dial up a crock of shit) or alleygateor (as in keeper of a gate to a blind alley) infested.
Ah well, it takes all sorts as the old saying has it.
@GW – and people on the fence due to denialist propaganda will see that “trust the science” is a leftist trope and veer off towards resuming their high water consumption.
Buckeye, AZ, west of Phoenix, is a boomtown expected to grow to rival the size of Phoenix over the next 50 years, into the desert. Every development is supposed to be able to guarantee 100 year water sources before they can break ground. With the water table depleting as fast as the Colorado River, I don’t know where they claim to be getting water from for the future. Maybe someone will queer enough of it.
@Mike,
Trans-water, aka water that was assigned sand at birth. There’s plenty of that in Arizona.
The environmental movement has long been plagued by the woo peddlers; those of us on the science side tend to get pushed aside for the likes of RFK Jr or such. The “Mother Goddess” and soul of the earth and so forth are just part of the myriad of bullshit calling itself environmental, and in most cases doing more harm than good.
This appears to be another manifestation, but is possibly the weirdest I’ve seen. At least the idea of Native American communities relationship with the earth, and our connection to our ancestors could be seen to have SOME relationship to the topic.
To me, this is just another example of trans stapling their flag to yet another fairly successful movement. We have done all the hard work to become marginally listened to, and they want to shove their dicks in where they don’t belong so they don’t have to do hard work. It’s SOP for them.
Another example of social ‘sciences’ using impenetrable jargon to create gibberish with a veneer of sophistication. It’s not devoid of meaning, you’re just not well read enough to glean the meaning from it! The counter to this being if someone cannot write in a way that communicates anything to the reader, the writer is awful.
I’d love to hear a devotee of queering all the sciences try to summarise this in plain english. I suspect the whole book can be boiled down to: science is dominated by white straight males.
@Omar,
As I once read, it don’t take all kinds. We just got all kinds.