WATER PROTESTS HUMAN BETRAYAL: “Floods and droughts. That is how water protests human betrayal. We need a mindset change in order to affect an attitude change about water,” stated Dr. Serpil Oppermann, co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities
“Many of the metaphors that we find in the 19th century literary and historical texts unfortunately harbour mastering visions. They saw oceans and waterways being there to serve human purposes. But the idea behind that mindset is that water and aquatic entities are inert, incapable of expressing themselves. They are seen as commodities. They are not seen as lively, agentic beings who can feel. We affect water, and we are affected by water. It is a two-fold process. When waterways are colonized by socio-political systems as commodities, they protest,” stated Serpil Oppermann.