CFP for Sanglap 11.2 on Politics of Waterscapes
CFP for Sanglap 11.2
Politics of Waterscapes
Reflecting on her 2011 memoir, tellingly titled The Chronology of Water, American writer Lidia Yuknavitch observes in an interview: “For me, water is the perfect metamorphosis environment. It’s life giving. Macro and micro. Water has changed me like the great waters made paths into earth and mountain. Water has rebirthed me hundreds of times. I go to water to feel the truth of things beyond a self. All the colors of water arrest and open me. I hope everyone finds what it is that makes them feel the way water makes me feel.” In Yuknavitch, we see how water opens a felt feminine space, replete with the ripples of identity formation and deformation.
Water in literature is as old as literature itself. While ancient Indian literary sources such as the Upanishada consider water sacred and a rich source of philosophical meditation, without water and pondering on the religious, philosophical, and political significance of water much of ancient Greek and Latin literatures such as the Odyssey is incomplete. In the recent times, with the rising concerns of the environment, scarcity, and droughts, water has been at the centre of creative and critical discussions. In 2007, sociologist Amita Baviskar edited a volume of essays on ‘waterscapes’ to examine ‘this fluid, fast-changing terrain by using the analytical framework of cultural politics to examine questions of power and inequality, conflicts and compromises around water’. Popular Hindi films like ‘Bhavesh Joshi’ have drawn on the water mafia politics in India and re-imagined the figure of the superhero in that context.
We draw from this use of the term and want to explore how water has been commodified or enclosed for profit as a resource, generating complex power dynamics. Issues of access in terms of caste, race, or gender related discrimination have also mobilised conversations around pitching water at the centre of discussions for community and economy. In many cases, these thinkers have gone to literature to support their arguments, as literary scholars have argued for water’s significance for community building and historical documentation. Water’s agentic power has also made recent incursions into critical studies where questions of fluidity and power have led to the emergence of the subfield, ‘blue humanities’.
It is this framework of understanding water as a source of energy, resource, commodity, as well as philosophy, politics, and culture that we wish to explore in this issue through studies of how water is represented in literature and culture. Recent and burgeoning work on hydropolitics, riparian fiction, liquid modernity allows to think where we stand with the question of water in literature as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century.
This issue is less interested in the question of mere representation of water in literature than what we can draw from these representations towards a politics of sustainable, resilient, equitable living on the planet. We invite essays that address, but not in a limited fashion, the following subthemes:
- Water and Climate Crisis
- Water and Modernity
- Water and Fluidity
- River System and the Novel
- Metaphoricity of Water v/s its Materiality
- Water and Identity
- Water Mafia Politics
- Water, Flood and Disaster
- Water and Gender
- Water and Transparency
Please submit essays that are between 5000 and 7000 words long by March 15, 2025. All contributions will be blind peer reviewed, and we aim to return decisions by May 30, 2025. The issue will be published in June/July 2025.
