The Somatechnics of Water: Part 2

Water's capacity to be deafening and destructive reflects its power as both an energy and infrastructural force. The previous issue, ‘The Somatechnics of Water – Part 1’, critically examined the instrumentalisation of water in hydrocolonial and biopolitical practices of human and non-human liveability. The issue also explored the relationality of water and its assembling role in enjoining various actors to its flows and topographies. ‘Part 2’ continues the analyses of water power across hydrosocial and hydrocolonial sites in Australia, Chile, Singapore and Colombia. These case sites are used to explore how juridical, extractivist, and capitalist logics attempt to contain and respond to water's abundance and scarcity. A common theme of the papers is the burden placed on non-human others and Indigenous populations to manage water degradation once its use has been exhausted by state endeavours. The papers also highlight water's permeability (to borrow from Grealy) and the expansive vectors of its flows into otherwise impenetrable spaces.