Sedimentary Ways

Abstract

This paper is a thought experiment to attune to the geo-physical and geo-political materialities of sediment, a terra-aqueous substance produced when the earth’s continental surfaces intra-act with the atmosphere and are chemically transformed by it. The paper is framed by questions of how to engage more closely with the dynamics of earth systems and of how social and political agency emerges alongside earth forces. Sediment is important to such questions because it is the mechanism by which the earth recycles itself and is thick with the climatological and geological histories that have conditioned the possibility of life on the planet. While acknowledging the import of Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphysics to such questions, the paper takes a material approach to them. It is based on field work in Bangladesh, but also traverses a range of scientific, historical and theoretical literature. It is arranged in four sections that loosely correspond to the sedimentary cycle. It follows sediment from chemical processes on rock surfaces in the Himalayas, to its lively travels in monsoonal rivers across flood plains to its eventual deposition and subterranean diagenesis. In each section, the paper discusses the material processes at work, their socio-political enmeshments and the theoretical implications of these intra-actions. The paper concludes that sediment serves as a reminder not only of close entanglements of geo-physical and geo-political becomings, but also of the profound indifference of earth systems to human affairs, and asks what this might mean for the re-imagination of politics.

Paradigm shifts for a planetary emergency: Towards an anthropocenography for urban coastal research at False Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

“…The very ungovernability of mobile, inbetween states of matter is the reason for environmental struggles over contaminants. 57 Property boundaries, legal categorisations, states of matter, and landform types have all hindered the researchers' ability to see linkages that are in plain sight -and evident to those who live in the area. Muddy boots are necessities for regional Anthropocene studies.…”

Planetary Cities: Fluid Rock Foundations of Civilization

“…Geomorphologists relate how corrosive forces, especially the ongoing onslaught of weakly acidic rainwater, gradually dissembles solid rock into smaller, more mobile materials -or sediments (Smith, 2012). Also conveyed by wind and glaciers, sediments are most often transported by fluid water that is gravitationally driven from higher to lower elevations (see Bremner, 2020). In turn, tectonic plate movement generates the gradients that keep water flowing and produces the depressions in which sediment collects -following pathways that change over time as the Earth's crust deforms and reforms (Zalasiewicz, 2008: 14-15).…”

“…Once clay has led us from riverbanks to early city-shaping activities we are already moving along a path from sedimentation to another great geological force. Where they are not subject to anthropic interception, most fluvial sediments come to rest in dips or basins -to commence the slow return to solid rock (Bremner, 2020). If a stratum of sediment sinks beneath subsequent layers and is sufficiently compressed and/or heated, its structure will eventually change.…”

Thinking with the grain

“…Given how far work on geophilosophy has come, thinking actively about shared agendas in relation to new materialisms and ontologies of becoming would help specify the particularity of sand’s particles – i.e. how the granularity of sand may offer novel or distinctive possibilities to, say, the instabilities, mobilities, multiple phases, and emergent properties associated with dust, ice, or mud (Bremner, 2020; Nasser, 2018; Nieuwenhuis, 2018; Whitt, 2018). Jamieson, to his credit, grounds his theorisation in the field experience of researching sand extraction and trading in Southeast Asia.…”