Dr Shé Mackenzie Hawke, The University of Sydney

This paper explores the potential application of broad water literacy sourced from Darwin’s aquatic and gendered oversights to current accounts of water re-signification through poetics and the work of Emily Potter. Just as Darwin wore gendered blinkers—in relation to aquatic environments—so too has the ‘settlement’ story of Australia often worn socio/cultural blinkers. Through a ficto-critical writing practice, this paper aims to alter the course of water in the public imagination by re-signifying its many presentations and forms as a meeting place, not just between gender and culture, but also between scientific and literary cross currents. My aim is to offer re-distributive possibilities of water knowledge that takes up Potter’s notion of water literacy across fields. The current water crisis begs us to re imagine our relationship with water and the hydrological cycle, and the knowledges that have often reduced it to mere commodity. This paper uses water as a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary tool, through which a more holistic and reverent understanding of water may be achieved. To that end, it offers ficto-criticism (the meshing of theory—in this instance scientific theory ala Darwin—and creativity) as the literary object/practice that may produce new insights into existing paradigms.