Undamning

Undamning is an experimental poetic/theoretical project which follows the undamming of a river with companion footnotes setting out a lexicon of new terms of undamning, as I classify them, or ‘generative negativity’ as Jack Halberstam puts it; the recent proliferation of unbuilding, undoing, undrowning, ungrounding, unlearning, unmaking, unmarking, unthinking, untethering, unworlding deriving predominantly from anarchic, black, crip, decolonial, feminist, indigenous, queer and trans artists, architects and theorists which resolve to unmake the world and forms of imperialist philosophy and practice underpinning it.

The opening essay, Undamming, follows the gush and rush of a river as it is undammed taking a first-person perspective of the water and incorporating quotes from each of the sources in the lexicon. It is not about the dam but the river, a demolition of things that have grown in, an exposure of what was once submerged, and a return to what was but anew. 

The parallel text, Undamning, is a lexicon of existing, new, and yet used terms. Undamming a river finds its way to other words of undamning - an undamming of terms of undamning. As Édouard Glissant urges it is about trembling thinking, from source to mouth - what does it mean to unearth these terms and unfix them, revealing etymological and fluvial roots and routes, revealing the often far more radical etymology which has been obscured by power over time.

The following chapters open to other contributors who have selected or invented an un-word to undam and undamn. In that way the book introduces then unpacks a lexicon, inviting others to take a word, to free it from constriction and take it on a fluent journey that energises and transforms, as I have been by these ideas. This is a book to carry in the struggle when you reach the blockade.