Forum 3: amphibious architecture beyond the levee

ABSTRACT

According to many critical theorists, the Anthropocene signals the necessity for a critical framework rooted in complex systems entanglement, antihumanism, and diminished possibilities. Exemplary of this approach, Bruno Latour argues that the Anthropocene equals the end of human mobility in the sense of movement from one’s given conditions to a ‘better’ or somehow improved world. Instead, humans must understand that they are ‘earthbound.’ While critical theorists like Latour proclaim ‘our’ unpreparedness for terrestrial existence, counseling diminished expectations and diminished mobility – for many outside of academia’s hallowed halls, the Anthropocene and its ‘back loop’ possibilities look very different. Exploring the use of amphibious architecture in the working-class fishing community of Old River Landing, Louisiana, in contrast to Latour and other Anthropocene thinkers, I argue that such experiments are a testament to how diverse people operate; without transcendents and in ways quite different from models forwarded by critical theorists or resilience experts. Rather than a life enchained to the earth or resilience conceived as riding it out among the ruins, Old River Landing like many other back loop experiments offers a story of people who love the part of earth they inhabit, and a mobility and adaptability critical theorists argue is no longer possible. Rather than accepting or celebrating entanglement in the given order of things as is – flooding = moving = dependence – such experiments entail a way of inhabiting the Earth founded in confident flight as much as gravity, offering a view of another kind of mobility in and on Earth.