Women's Archipelagic NarratiVES. Gendered Eco-Consciousness in Water-related Anglophone Literature

ongoing

Human intimacy with water has been a distinctive feature of the Anthropocene. As seas rise, glaciers melt and warmer air absorbs more moisture, the need to recognize that human lives are physically, socially and culturally shaped by their relationship with water is imperative. Following the oceanic turn in the Humanities and attempting to reverse the patriarchal, land-centric paradigm that has long dominated ecocritical studies, WAVES aims to investigate the aquatic imaginary in contemporary archipelagic literature by anglophone women writers. Drawing from a broad corpus of primary water-texts from both Atlantic and Pacific oceanic contexts, i.e. Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light (2013), Tiphanie Yanique's Land of Love and Drowning (2014), Elaine Castillo's America is not the Heart (2018), Lani Wendt Young's Afakasi Woman (2019), and Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch (2020), and analyzing them through a material ecocritical lens, this project has a twofold objective. First, a critical examination of wet matter as an entity possessing intrinsic agency and vitality can prompt a reevaluation of current understandings of water as an exchangeable and utilitarian resource. Second, WAVES seeks to demonstrate that modern female authors’ representations of the archipelago, in its material and ideological dimensions, both elucidate the complex dynamics of water—as exemplified by the depiction of the unique archipelagic environmental system and the portrayal of postcolonial archipelagic diasporas—and imagine new ways to change our relationship to it. WAVES positions itself within the emerging field of the Blue Humanities and seeks to add a gender perspective to current research in archipelagic studies by pointing out the crucial part played by women in envisaging potential paths to enhance global environmental consciousness.