Lecture
SG - Hydro Refugees & Storytelling Power
African literature’s insights into the paradoxes of hydro-modernity from the perspective of those who get in the way of ‘progress’.
About Hydro Refugees & Storytelling Power
Luck Makuyana speaks with us tonight about African literature as a vehicle for unpacking anthropogenic practices embodied in hydro-infrastructures. He will share insights from the field of oceanic humanities that recognises the place of water in (post)colonial discourses. What exactly is this? How does a watery turn to the dry technologies of post-colonialism unsettle land/water, human/non-human and coloniser/colonised binaries? How does literature uniquely make these issues legible and accessible? Tour together, the paradoxes of hydro-modernity from the perspectives of those who get in the way of ‘progress’ - indigenous communities and the more-than-human. Join us to focus on imaginative hydro-social relations in storytelling. Explore how literary writing of riverine people provides insights into human/ nature relations and how thoughts drift to water.
About Luck Makuyana
Luck Makuyana is a PhD candidate in the Department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). His research focuses on African literature, oceanic literature, hydro-infrastructures, indigenous hydro-spiritual infrastructures and animal studies. In this watery inflection to post-colonial discourse, the objective is to unsettle land-based binaries of land/water, coloniser/colonised, centre/periphery, culture/nature, and human/non-human.