Dark Water: Rememory, Biopower, and Black Feminist Art

What does water mean to contemporary society today? This paper is interested in water and race; Blackness specifically, wherein the Middle Passage (Mid-Atlantic Slave Trade) marks the beginning of a fraught and complex relationship between African-Americans and water...typified many might argue by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005. This article looks backward at water’s ability to destroy and to create through lenses focused on race and art: something akin to water as a symbol of America’s complicated relationship with race. Using cultural texts such as art and film this piece works to unsettle the intimate connections of power, gender, and sexuality and offer alternative cartographies of empowerment and survival with regard to racialization and water.