At the roots, Joya. Water as a source of communion

Abstract

The disconnection between nature and society is one of the points that has most concerned critical academia in recent decades. Ecologists such as Arne Naess, Raimon Panikkar, Vandana Shiva, Pierre Charbonnier, and Yayo Herrero have reflected on this issue, but also other Marxist thinkers, such as Kohei Saito or artists of the stature of Lori Singer. In the field of water, Astrida Neimanis broke new ground in 2012 with Thinking with water: an aqueous imaginary and an epistemology of unknowability, in which she opened the anthropological reflection on water to different collective imaginaries. Creating another conception of water represents a first step towards a return to the understanding of nature as an essential part of life in society, breaking with the separation that capitalist philosophy broke a few decades ago in our ontologies. This article will review some of the main proposals that have been elaborated in this direction from academia, popular culture, the artistic world and activism, for the articulation of water as a source of communion that returns us to the roots of our existence and, in it, find gold.