The Somatechnics of Water: Part 1

Water constitutes an integral and assembling life force for bodies, technologies, and power. Historical and social understandings of rivers and water sources impact the materialisation and instrumentalisation of water (DasGupta 2020). In particular, the abstraction of water from its contextual assemblages can work to reinforce power relations. Adele Perry argues that ‘the forgetting of where water comes from … [is] enabled by the social relations of colonialism’ (as cited in Coyne et al. 2020). Amidst calls to think with volume (Steinberg and Peters 2015) and processually (see Hemming et al. 2019) regarding the flows and matter of water, this special issue attends to the somatechnics of water and its relational embedded-ness with knowledge, environments, and both human and non-human actors.