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Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them - from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, this book develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it

AbstractHow can we cultivate an underground multispecies justice with beings whose lifeworlds are unknown and unknowable? This article examines this question through a consideration of stygofauna: miniscule deep-time creatures who make their home in the watery seams of the earth. Taking a cue from these critters—many of whom have evolved without eyes to make their way differently in the darkness of their watery subterranean homes—the article troubles the assumption that knowledge, care, and justice must be predicated on a kind of knowing that insists that humans literally bring other worlds to light. Through a specifically situated exploration of stygofaunal worlds, knowledge, and mining in Australia, the article asks, How is knowledge-as-illumination complicit with complex regimes of knowledge where knowing in the name of justice is tangled up in knowing as a further (colonial, speciesist, ableist) violence? Refusing purity politics, the article's first aim is to demonstrate our complicity with extractive knowledge regimes even in a quest to care for underground worlds. Second, the article insists that knowing otherwise is both possible and already at work. It argues that to know stygofauna otherwise, one cannot eschew science or knowledge altogether. Instead, it proposes that multispecies justice depends on two moves: first, on safeguarding a mode of unknowability that the article refers to as estrangement, and second, on recognizing and cultivating knowledge practices that can cultivate nonextractive relations with subterranean species, even if imperfectly. It concludes with a short overview of several examples of knowing otherwise that push readers to think differently about knowledge as a practice of care and justice.

Is representation always colonisation? This question has high stakes for feminist, anticolonial and environmental justice projects alike, where in each case, technologies of representation trace a fine line between the much-needed redress of injustice done unto others, and the various violences that accompany speaking for them. At the same time, some ecofeminist and postcolonial positions concur that while perhaps impossible, representation might nonetheless be necessary. My objective here is to assess and extend these discussions in order to suggest the possibility of posthuman representation of non-human natures – in other words, a representation without representationalism, where the notion of a pre-representational reality as ontologically distinct from its representation is rejected. This kind of representation would remain concerned with the urgent need to advocate for the interests of non-humans, but also with the risk of capture and appropriation that runs alongside the impetus to 'speak for others' that feminist and postcolonial debates highlight. Linking the problem of representation specifically to a tenacious nature/cultural dualism, I draw specifically on posthuman feminist theories, and the work of Vicki Kirby. At the same time, I argue that attention to the lessons of anticolonial feminism can guide a concerted ethics of response. What we need is a technics of representation that espouses a flat ontology, but firmly rejects the notion of a flat ethics.

Responding to Rosi Braidotti's call for more 'conceptual creativity' in thinking through contemporary feminist subjectivity, this paper proposes the figuration of the body of water. It begins with a critical materialist enhancement of Adrienne Rich's concept of a politics of location, followed by a schematised description of the various 'hydro-logics' in which our bodies partake. The ways in which these logics already inform diverse modes of feminist scholarship are then explored. The objective of this paper is to locate, at the confluence of these discourses and descriptions, an invigorated figuration of the feminist subject as body of water. This subject is posthumanist and material, both real and aspirational. Most importantly, she is responsively attuned to other watery bodies—both human and more-than-human—within global flows of political, social, cultural, economic and colonial planetary power.

Latvian people's craving for freedom culminated in the beginning of 1990-s. The activity of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia was renewed, and the state power was returned to the people. From this moment, the work on dismantling the Soviet legal system in Latvia had started. A legal system had been redirected to the principles of the Western legal branch. The hard core of these principles was already in the Article 1 of the 1920 Constitution of the Republic of Latvia which states that Latvia is an independent and democratic republic. A key element of a democratic state is of a legal state. The division of powers, which is an essential element of a judge's independence, is in force in a legal state. Up to 2009 the judge's independence was based on the understanding of the institutional independence, when the other branches of state power must not sit as a court, and on the understanding of the personal independence, when the pressure to the judge is not acceptable during the administration of justice. Only after the complication of the financial situation, there were also highlighted other elements of the judge's independence principle, including financial security. Separate present cases in society, these together produce a variety of problems understanding the judge's independence principle. It is positively characterized, that by expanding cooperation with foreign judges, the independence of Latvian judges' self-consciousness is increasing. But these are not just demands for greater freedom. Currently, the Latvian legal system has identified several problems: 1) the admissibility of the judges participating in discussions with other government representatives, 2) the stability of judges' salaries, 3) the judges' progress in their careers, 4) the best model for evaluating judges' professional qualifications, 4) the need of judges' administrative immunity; 5) the need of the Honour Judge Institute. The decisions of the Constitutional Court had a great impact on the understanding the content of the ...