Composing Abstract Hydrology

Exploring the Blue Humanities of Uncertainty

Work in Progress Seminar 2nd November 2012, English and Cultural Studies

Tributaries Introducing my broader thesis

1.  Exploring Fluid Ecology

2.  The Sea of the World and Liquid Modernity

3.  Oceanic Affect in the Twenty-first century: Medieval lessons?

“…‘primitive’ is taken from a spring [fons] where water coming through hidden channels first [primus] appears. ‘Derivative’ is taken from the stream [rivus] that flows forth [de] from the spring itself. Hence just as a stream can be deduced from another stream, so one derivative originates from another. But spring and streams [rivi] flow down to produce a river [flumen]. For all rivers come out of the sea, and finally return to the sea. And the sea does not overflow [redundat]. Similarly, all sentences [orationes] take their origin from grammar, and they return to the same, and yet grammar is not redundant [redundat].”

Joannes Balbus' (John of Genoa's) Catholicon, in R. Copeland and I. Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300 -1475, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, , p. 361.

Fluid Ecology

Existing in an ever-escaping world  

Proposal One:

Turbulence is an ambivalent and yet necessary force of moral motion, and this is

fruitful for the study of poetics

Soul:

Poor wretches, what will become of you in this sea? Why did you put your trust in that deceptive calm? Why, in a precarious situation, were you so carefree? Why were you not suspicious of the smoothness of the sea? Why were you not afraid to trust your lives to the treacherous element? Why do you leave the firmness of the shore? … 0 unhappy wretched men, see how swiftly your joy has been changed, and into what sorry plight your life has fallen. Once, in your foolish rejoicing, you found amusement in the fishes of the sea. Now, when you are shipwrecked and miserably cast away, they receive you as their food.

Noah's  Ark  III,  De  Vanitate  Mundi,  in  Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  Selected  Spiritual  Wri7ngs  /  Translated  by  a  Religious  of  C.S.M.V.,  with  an  Introduc7on  by  Aelred  Squire,  O.P.,  Classics  of  the  Contempla7ve  Life.  (London:  Faber,  1962),  pp.  171-­‐172.  

Proposal Two:

Despite its many dangers and uncertainties, turbulence is a force that is both necessary

and morally enabling

“Fear prompts us to take defensive action. When it is taken, defensive action gives immediacy and tangibility to fear. It is our responses that recast the sombre premonitions as daily reality, making the world flesh…Among the mechanisms vying to approximate to the dream model of perpetuum mobile, the self-reproduction of the tangle of fear and fear-inspired actions comes closes to claiming pride of place.”

Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty’, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, p. 9.

Proposal Three:

Nothing temporal will ever cease to move, and this is an inspiration rather than a

danger

“At the outset of the treatise De archa Noe Hugh of St Victor recounts the occasion that gave rise to a conversation that led ultimately to the writing of the treatise. One day, Hugh says, he was answering questions put to him by his fellow regular canons, when discussion became focused on the 'instability and restlessness' of the human heart. Implored by his brothers in religion to show the cause of this instability and, furthermore, to teach them if it could be cured 'by any skill [arte] or by the practice of some discipline [laboris cuius libet exercitatione]’.”

Grover A. Zinn, ' Minding Matter: Materia and the World in the Spirituality and Theology of Hugh of St. Victor', in Matter, E. Ann (ed), Mind Matters: Studies Of Medieval and Early-Modern Intellectual History In Honour Of Marcia Colish, Brepols, 2009, pp. 47-48.

Blue Humanities

Merging Affect and Approach  

“The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver–comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants–Europe’s average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.”

~NASA – ‘A Chilling Possibility’

Oceanic Uncertainty:���Mitigation or Adaptation? ���

The Blue Humanities

Mitigation:

Resistance, Regulatation, Alteration, Restriction

Adaptation:

Reconsideration, Renewal, Flexibility, Philosophy, Humanity?

“Empty  your  mind.  Be  formless,  shapeless,  like  water…”                     ~Bruce  Lee  

The  Lilypad  –  A  floa7ng  and  self-­‐sustaining  habitat  for  50,  000  climate  change  refugees  –  Vincent  Callebaut  Architectures  

Questions for you

1.  Which threads most effectively link the twenty-first century ocean to the past?

2.  How can the abstract imagining of the ocean and with the ocean enrich intellectual and

emotional life?

3.  What sources and theoretical framework best resonate with these ideas?