The Agony of Water in an Age of Climate Change

Examining how water appears to humanity (its forms) and how humanity apprehends it (our perceptual horizons), this book proposes a methodology for better understanding and conceptualizing our relationship to water in an age characterized by climate change.

Water—the very basis of life—is under threat all over this planet, and this book offers critical understandings of how our thinking prevents us from addressing this very real danger. Structured around important 'watery' concepts such as flood, drought, circulation, melt, plastic, and resilience, it examines literary and filmic texts from a variety of writers and directors such as Amitav Ghosh, J.G. Ballard, Zora Neale Hurston, and Carolina Caycedo.

Offering a rigorous treatment of water at its most unruly - that is, when, water fails to behave as humans need or expect it to - this book enriches both our understanding of climate change and the challenge of perceiving it, with respect to one of life’s most crucial elements.