Garonne Mother of the More-Than-Human Subject. With Michel Serres

Posthumanism, in its various forms, expansions, and intersections, has for several decades been devoting considerable energy to the task of finding a place for biotic and abiotic life in the human world, as well as a space for humans in the biotic and abiotic world. This contribution engages with this effort by proposing an inquiry—one that is, in fact, posthumanist in the broad sense—into the catalytic role of a not-only-human, or better yet, more-than-human subjectivity that an abiotic living entity such as the Garonne River plays in Michel Serres’s philosophical-anthropological reflection. From this perspective, the contribution will focus primarily on the idea of a diffuse agency whereby every entity possesses the capacity for codification, and thinking is not the exclusive prerogative of humans, but rather consists of an inventive power intrinsic to the universe. This will therefore lead us to turn our attention to Serres’s redefinition of the notion of the subject as subjectum, that which “is thrown beneath”, and of thinking as an inventive capacity intrinsic to the universe, and thus to the idea that, in order to think, one must “throw oneself beneath”, that is, immerse oneself in cosmic potential. In this regard, it will be highlighted how it is precisely the river (Garonne), as an ecosystem of material agency and a relational-poietic dimension, that induces and catalyzes in the body—which swims within it, gradually metamorphoses into its elements, and dives to its bottom—this process of material-sensory-cognitive hybridization with the world and of (re)incorporation into the universal flow of forms (that is, into the subjectum), which makes it a subjectivity that is not merely human. From here, we will then focus more specifically on the aquatic dimension of the river (Garonne), analyzing—also in light of the hydro-feminist-posthumanist perspective—the (metaphorical-theoretical-)material role of water in the catalysis of more-than-human subjectivities; we will consider its character as an element common to all entities, and thereby its facilitation of inter-permeation among bodies, beyond barriers and boundaries, and thus its action of hybridizing subjectivities. These steps will thus lead to highlighting the crucial role, on a theoretical-material level, of the river itself in the processes of (re)incorporating the human into the more-than-human and of constituting more-than-human subjectivities.