The Word for World Is Water takes Ursula K. Le Guin's landmark fiction as its departure point, assembling artists, thinkers, and activists to reconceive water not as resource but as cosmological force — archive, kinship, and living territory.
About This Book
Edited by Katya Garcia-Anton and Margarida Mendes, this polyphonic publication draws together voices from Indigenous, ecological, and decolonial traditions to map what water knows and carries. Rivers appear as sites of resistance; oceans as shelter for communities; peatlands as slow repositories of memory. The contributors — spanning Amazonia, the Himalayas, the UK, Estonia, and beyond — do not merely write about water but speak from within its logics. The result is less anthology than atlas: a plural, fluid document of world-making that refuses the extractive framing still dominant in environmental discourse. Essential reading for practitioners engaged with landscape, ecology, and the politics of place.
Key Features
- 252 pages of essays, artistic contributions, and polyphonic critical writing from global contributors
- Edited by Katya Garcia-Anton and Margarida Mendes
- Contributors include Susan Schuppli, Ailton Krenak, Sara Ahmed, Nat Raha, Karolin Tampere, Himali Singh Soin, David Soin Tappeser, and Karan Shrestha
- Published by Spector Books, ISBN: 9783959059688
What You'll Discover
- How Indigenous and decolonial frameworks reconceive rivers, oceans, and peatlands as sentient, politically charged territories rather than passive natural resources
- The Amazon as a sentient, interconnected world — through the philosophy of Ailton Krenak, an Indigenous leader and activist from Amazonia
- Peatlands as living, absorptive ecosystems that preserve memory and resist extraction, explored through Karolin Tampere's curatorial and research practice
- Water as medium of transformation and survival — connecting trans poetics, feminist theory, material politics, and spiritual ecology across seven contributor perspectives
About the Author
Katya Garcia-Anton and Margarida Mendes are the editors of this volume. The book's contributors include Susan Schuppli, an artist and researcher working on climate, water, and the material politics of evidence; Ailton Krenak, an Indigenous philosopher and activist from Amazonia; Sara Ahmed, a feminist theorist and founder of the Living Waters Museum; and Karan Shrestha, an Indigenous artist from the Himalayas whose practice engages memory, landscape, and spiritual ecology, among others.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 252
- Dimensions: 120 x 190 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783959059688
- Publisher: Spector Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, landscape designers, and spatial practitioners engaged with ecological thinking; researchers and students working at the intersection of decolonial theory, environmental humanities, and contemporary art practice.