Writing on Water: Resources, Discourses, Reflections
by Justin Scott-Coe and W. Scott Howard
Reconstruction
If one reckons that the planet on which we live and even the bodies in which we live consist mostly of water, then it is a short step to seeing the enormous role that water plays in human experience. Scholars, whether in the Humanities or the Sciences, who neglect the "floods of life stream[ing] around and through us," who overlook an essential element of their experience, bury their scholarship in arid soil. To overlook the relations between the hydrologic world and human experience, between our experience and the theories we formulate about the world, is to deny both the existence of the greater text that scholars must consider and the greater contexts in which scholarly consideration occurs.
T.S. McMillan, par. 8
The idea of voyage is implicit in the form of the boat.
Basia Irland, par. 23
<1> We started this project in the shadow of the Great Tsunami of 2004, witnessed Katrina destroy New Orleans as submissions were coming in, and now publish during a record-breaking, nationwide—some say worldwide—heat wave. Is it any wonder the release of our journal issue on water appears as suspiciously timed as Al Gore's droning tome on global warming?
<2> Still, our own lives continually touch upon more immediate, everyday water worries. Justin commutes to work, as a Southern California water consultant, across the Santa Ana River—once ephemeral stream and now flowing continuously (and increasingly) with highly treated municipal wastewater effluent. Scott teaches early modern literature amid the shrinking glaciers and tinder-dry timber of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, vital for being the headwaters for major rivers in the Western United States.
<3> Water is truly inescapable (both in the near and far term) as a fundamental substance, as a contested resource, and as a dynamic subject of study and object of desire among many discourse communities. Is there a field of knowledge, a sector of the economy, a practice of everyday life that is not quickened by water and its multifarious uses and significations? How to write on water? How not to? William Blake's approach, in "Songs of Innocence," was to pluck "a hollow reed", make "a rural pen", and stain "the water clear."[1] Our path, our reflections, though perhaps not quite so bucolic, also led us to matters paradoxical and political, secular and sacred, local and global. Water transforms all that it touches; writing on water involves displacement, refraction, dissolution, pollution, distillation, clarification, transport.
<4> According to hermetic tradition, Water (embodied as the god, Nu) was the primal substance from which the gods of the first ennead emerged. Because all life begins in water, there is an ancient Chinese belief that water is the dwelling place of the dragon. Many cultures draw distinctions between "upper" and "lower" waters: the former corresponding with a realm of what is potential and the latter with what is already given in creation. Modern psychology grasps the unconscious as a fluid body: the non-formal, catalytic, female component of the personality. Water is often associated with intuitive wisdom. Immersion in water may signify a return to innocence or holiness—concomitant with an experience of loss, death or annihilation followed by rebirth, regeneration, and a strengthening of the life force.[2] Approximately 72% of the fat free mass of the human body is composed of water.
Systematic name: Water
Aliases: Aqua, Dihydrogen Monoxide, Hydroxic Acid, Hydrogen Hydroxide
Molecular formula: H2O
Molar mass: 18.02 g/mol
Density and phase: 1000 kg/m 3, liquid; 917 kg/m 3, solid
Melting point: 0°C (273.15 K) (32°F)
Boiling point: 100°C (373.15 K) (212°F)
Specific heat capacity (liquid): 4186 J/(kg·K)
<5> The Oxford English Dictionary provides forty-nine definitions for "water" and several connotative and denotative secondary permutations for each of those primary meanings.[3] Volume three, the Supplement, adds fifteen more, plus numerous respective variations.[4]Wikipedia offers a concise, hypertextual paragraph:
Water (in its pure form) is a tasteless, odorless substance that is essential to all known forms of life and is known also as the universal solvent. It appears colorless to the naked eye in small quantities, though it can be seen to be blue in large quantities or with scientific instruments. An abundant substance on Earth, water exists in many forms. It appears mostly in the oceans and polar ice caps, but also as clouds, rain water, rivers, freshwater aquifers, and sea ice. Water in these bodies continuously moves through a cycle of evaporation, precipitation, and runoff to the sea. Clean water is essential to human health, and, in many parts of the world, it is in short supply.[5]
<6> In this special issue of Reconstruction, our arrangement of articles according to the sub-categories of Liquid, Ice, and Vapor traces (if partially) water's endless cycle of changes, attaching them to meta-social significations suggested by each. Thus, in Liquid we test our limited perspective (colorless? blue?) on this all-too-familiar substance; in Ice, our frozen short supply of water awareness and witness; and in Vapor, the radically unconventional potential housed in water's transformative properties.
To Read the Rest of the Editorial Introduction
To Access the "Water" Issue
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