WATER CONTROL AND HUMAN VULNERABILITY: BLUE HUMANITIES AND ECO-MATERIALIST STUDY OF ELEGY, SOUTHWEST

Abstract

Human desire to dominate nature has left significant ecological and emotional impacts, especially in areas that were influenced by the massive hydraulic engineering. This study explores the vulnerability of contemporary water systems like dams, reservoirs, and man-made waterways and the ecological stresses that emerge due to the manipulation of water systems over the long term. This paper discusses how engineered landscapes transform not only the ecosystems but the emotional and bodily experiences of people who inhabit the transformed landscapes through a close textual examination of the novel. Based on the theoretical frameworks of the blue humanities and the eco-materialist theory, the study aims to reveal the overlaps between the environmental decline and embodied vulnerability, showing that grief, illness, emotional breakage, and physical feelings reflect the emptiness and unsteadiness of the broken water systems. This work makes a contribution to the field of environmental humanities and provides a critical perception of how hydrological degradation is material and emotionalized by disclosing these profound entanglements between the ecological and corporeal conditions.