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Watershed Encounters

Watershed Encounters The term watershed is derived from the German wasserscheide, which means “parting of the waters” and refers to the geographic boundary that separates one drainage basin from another. It is from this definition that we derive the concept of “watershed moments”—events that seem to change the course of history. I suggest that the intersection of temporal and spatial relationships embedded within the watershed concept reveals the interaction between modernist conceptions of space and time, enabling the persistence of trauma and violence that characterizes modernity. In this article, I examine a series of watershed encounters in the Chesapeake Bay region and how they transform our understanding of the environmental problems that face the estuary and its landscape. I argue that the “restoration” effort currently at work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed fails to grapple with the spatial and temporal ruptures that created these problems, and therefore it simply perpetuates the trauma and violence of modernity. However, through the praxis of watershed encounters described in this article, I argue that we can penetrate the spatial and temporal logics of modernity and begin the recuperative work of finding what Deborah Bird Rose refers to as “alternatives to our embeddedness in violence.” http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Environmental Humanities Duke University Press

Watershed Encounters

Trombley, Jeremy
Environmental Humanities , Volume 10 (1) – May 1, 2018
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22 pages

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Copyright
© 2018 Jeremy Trombley
ISSN
2201-1919
eISSN
2201-1919
DOI
10.1215/22011919-4385489
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The term watershed is derived from the German wasserscheide, which means “parting of the waters” and refers to the geographic boundary that separates one drainage basin from another. It is from this definition that we derive the concept of “watershed moments”—events that seem to change the course of history. I suggest that the intersection of temporal and spatial relationships embedded within the watershed concept reveals the interaction between modernist conceptions of space and time, enabling the persistence of trauma and violence that characterizes modernity. In this article, I examine a series of watershed encounters in the Chesapeake Bay region and how they transform our understanding of the environmental problems that face the estuary and its landscape. I argue that the “restoration” effort currently at work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed fails to grapple with the spatial and temporal ruptures that created these problems, and therefore it simply perpetuates the trauma and violence of modernity. However, through the praxis of watershed encounters described in this article, I argue that we can penetrate the spatial and temporal logics of modernity and begin the recuperative work of finding what Deborah Bird Rose refers to as “alternatives to our embeddedness in violence.”

Journal

Environmental Humanities – Duke University Press

Published: May 1, 2018

References

  • Effect of Susquehanna River Stream Flow on Chesapeake Bay Salinities and History of Past Oyster Mortalities on Upper Bay Bars
    Beaven, G. Francis
  • The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model: A Miniaturization of the Largest Estuary in the United States
  • The Effects of Tropical Storm Agnes on the Chesapeake Bay Estuarine System
  • A Twenty-Five-Hundred-Year History of Anoxia and Eutrophication in Chesapeake Bay
    Cooper, S. R. Brush, G. S.
  • Restoration, Reintroduction, and Rewilding in a Changing World
    Corlett, Richard T.
  • History of the Stanford Watershed Model
    Crawford, Norman H. Burges, Stephen J.
  • The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature
    Cronon, William
  • Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity
    Dawdy, Shannon Lee
  • People without Things
    Fowles, Severin Bille, Mikkel Hastrup, Frida Soerensen, Tim Flohr
  • Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
    Haraway, D.
  • Retrospective: The Damage Caused by Hurricane Agnes
    Horton, Tom
  • The Age of the World Motion Picture: Cosmic Visions in the Post-Earthrise Era
    Ivakhiv, Adrian Brunn, Stanley D.
  • America’s Last Top Model
    Kailith, Ryan
  • Modeling Neptune’s Garden: The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model, 1965–1984
    Keiner, Christine Rozwadowski, Helen M. Van Keuren, David K.
  • Piscataway Conoy Continues Tribal-Status Effort
    Libit, Howard
  • Cooper’s Otsego County: A Bicentennial Guide of Sites in Otsego County Associated with the Life and Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper, 1789–1851
    MacDougall, Hugh Cook
  • Nutrient Loadings to Surface Waters: Chesapeake Bay Case Study
    Malone, Thomas C. Boynton, W. R. Horton, Tom Stevenson, Court Uman, Myron F.
  • Ecological Restoration Should Be Redefined for the Twenty-First Century
    Martin, David M.
  • Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor
    Tuck, Eve Yang, K. Wayne
  • Effect of Susquehanna River Stream Flow on Chesapeake Bay Salinities and History of Past Oyster Mortalities on Upper Bay Bars
    Beaven, G. Francis
  • The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model: A Miniaturization of the Largest Estuary in the United States
  • The Effects of Tropical Storm Agnes on the Chesapeake Bay Estuarine System
  • A Twenty-Five-Hundred-Year History of Anoxia and Eutrophication in Chesapeake Bay
    Cooper, S. R. Brush, G. S.
  • Restoration, Reintroduction, and Rewilding in a Changing World
    Corlett, Richard T.
  • History of the Stanford Watershed Model
    Crawford, Norman H. Burges, Stephen J.
  • The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature
    Cronon, William
  • Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity
    Dawdy, Shannon Lee
  • People without Things
    Fowles, Severin Bille, Mikkel Hastrup, Frida Soerensen, Tim Flohr
  • Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
    Haraway, D.
  • Retrospective: The Damage Caused by Hurricane Agnes
    Horton, Tom
  • The Age of the World Motion Picture: Cosmic Visions in the Post-Earthrise Era
    Ivakhiv, Adrian Brunn, Stanley D.
  • America’s Last Top Model
    Kailith, Ryan
  • Modeling Neptune’s Garden: The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model, 1965–1984
    Keiner, Christine Rozwadowski, Helen M. Van Keuren, David K.
  • Piscataway Conoy Continues Tribal-Status Effort
    Libit, Howard
  • Cooper’s Otsego County: A Bicentennial Guide of Sites in Otsego County Associated with the Life and Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper, 1789–1851
    MacDougall, Hugh Cook
  • Nutrient Loadings to Surface Waters: Chesapeake Bay Case Study
    Malone, Thomas C. Boynton, W. R. Horton, Tom Stevenson, Court Uman, Myron F.
  • Ecological Restoration Should Be Redefined for the Twenty-First Century
    Martin, David M.
  • Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor
    Tuck, Eve Yang, K. Wayne