Aqueous Territory: Learning from Louisiana's Colonial Histories and Watery Extremes

全球气候变化正在影响西方流行的文化观念，即水是一种稳定的资源。在英国，自2007年以来，由于降雨量每年增加17%，每年都会发生重大洪水事件(《卫报》，2020年2月)；在美国南部，自1970年以来，袭击墨西哥湾沿岸的飓风增加了15%(《华盛顿邮报》，9月1日)。2020)。尽管两国公民都呼吁政界人士通过改善基础设施来应对这种日益极端的天气现象，但平淡无奇的政治回应在很大程度上表明，水的持续存在以及控制其流动性的能力在很大程度上仍然被视为理所当然。在密西西比河流域(MRVB)--今天遭受气候变化重创的地区--自1690年以来，水的不稳定从历史和视觉上被记录为土著人民和殖民定居者生计的决定因素。拟议的水上领土网络旨在从农学家兼工程师A-S的地图和文本中研究和询问水在过去350年来在MRVB中发展的社会中所起作用的材料和口头历史。从Le Page du Pratz(1695-1775)到当代非裔美国艺术家B.Odum的涂鸦壁画，这些壁画在卡特里娜飓风(2005)中被洪水淹没后被遗弃的建筑物中。MRVB的这些水历史直观地展示了不公平的水资源分配及其控制机制带来的环境挑战和社会后果；更有希望的是，这一长期历史记录的一部分还为通过文化、基础设施和环境行动成功管理极端气候提供了蓝图。通过将来自艺术、人文、社会和硬科学的研究人员聚集在一起，研究历史、生物、语言、城市工程、讲故事、政治、环境、治安和人体之间的水界面，该网络将超越自然/文化鸿沟--在严格审查人类对其依赖的同时，与MRVB的生态系统进行身体对抗。网络的研究认为，MRVB历史和当前与水域极端的关系可以有效地与英国河口社区今天面临的问题进行比较，包括：资源分配、防洪和可持续保护。这个由一个跨学科团队研究的微观分析比较焦点，将使用MRVB的过去和现在的例子作为蓝图，在日益潮湿的英国塑造社会-气候相互作用。该网络将通过频繁会面交流想法来实现其集体研究目标，最初将于2021年秋季上线。然后，网络成员将与其他应邀的实地专家一起，于2022年5月在路易斯安那州举行会议。通过集体访问各种历史遗址，这些遗址是关于含水率对MRVB的重要性的辩论的引爆点--例如新奥尔良的堤坝--以及一个由土著和非裔美国人社区的艺术家和活动家参加的会议，我们将确定实际、历史和社会关切之间的接口，这些问题支配着当今MRVB对待含水率的问题。在接下来的10个月里，网络成员将发展他们的个人研究，包括创造性和学术写作以及音乐创作。他们将通过与英国河口社区处理类似水上主题的同事参加的在线会议保持联系。关于MRVB和英国含水率的集体研究结果将发表在由PI和Co-I编辑的《人文》(同行评议)特刊上。该网络的研究还将于2023年5月在英国埃克塞特大学的一次会议/表演中展示。这场免费的、由社区驱动的表演将以网络参与者的诗歌、散文和音乐作品为特色，由当地学生音乐团体翻译。

Global climate change is affecting the popular Western cultural perception of water as a stable resource. In the UK, major flood events have occurred every year since 2007 due to rainfall increases of 17% per year (Guardian, Feb. 2020); in the Southern US, hurricanes battering the Gulf Coast have increased by 15% since 1970 (Washington Post, Sept. 2020). Though citizens of both countries are calling on politicians to counteract such increasingly extreme weather phenomena through better infrastructure, the lackluster political response dramatically reveals the extent to which water's consistent presence, and the ability to control its fluidity, are still taken for granted. In the Mississippi River Valley Basin (MRVB)--a region hard hit by climate change today--water's instability has been historically and visually documented from 1690 as a determinant factor in the livelihood of Indigenous Peoples and colonial settlers. The proposed Aqueous Territory Network aims to study and interrogate the material and oral histories of water's role in those societies that developed in the MRVB during the last 350 years: from the maps and texts of agronomist-engineer A-S. Le Page du Pratz (1695-1775) to the graffiti murals of contemporary African American artist B. Odums in buildings left abandoned since they were flooded in Hurricane Katrina (2005). These aqueous histories of the MRVB visualize the environmental challenges and social consequences of inequitable water distribution and its control mechanisms; more hopefully, parts of this long historical record also offer a blueprint for successfully managing an intemperate climate through cultural, infrastructural, and environmental actions. By bringing together researchers from the arts, humanities, social, and hard sciences to investigate the watery interfaces between history, biology, language, urban engineering, story-telling, politics, environment, policing, and the human body, the network will transcend the nature/culture divide--physically confronting the MRVB's ecosystem while critically examining human dependencies on it.The network's research contends that the MRVB's historical and current relationship to aqueous extremes can be productively compared with issues that British estuarine communities are facing today, including: resource allocation, flood control, and sustainable conservation. This micro-analytic comparative focus, researched by an interdisciplinary team, will use past and present examples in the MRVB as a blueprint for shaping socio-climatic interactions in an increasingly wet Britain.The network will accomplish its collective research goals by meeting frequently to exchange ideas, initially online in Fall 2021. Along with other invited field experts, the network members will then meet in Louisiana in May 2022. Through collective visits to various historical sites which are flashpoints in the debate on the importance of aqueousness to the MRVB--such as New Orleans's levees--as well as a conference featuring artists and activists from Indigenous and African American communities, we will identify interfaces between practical, historical, and social concerns that govern the treatment of aqueousness in the MRVB today. Over the next 10 months, the network members will develop their individual research, including creative and scholarly writing as well as musical composition. They shall keep in touch through online meetings involving colleagues dealing with similar themes of aqueousness in British estuarine communities. Collective research results on aqueousness in the MRVB and Britain will be published in a special issue of 'Humanities' (peer-reviewed), edited by the Pi and Co-I. The network's research will also be presented at the University of Exeter, UK, at a conference/performance in May 2023. The free, community-driven performance will feature network participants' poetry, prose, and music compositions, interpreted by local student music groups.