Alongside the right to water, a posthumanist feminist imaginary

Arguing that a discourse of human rights may not allow for a robust understanding of water, this paper aims to expand the imaginary of what water can be, of what water might need, and of our human implications and responsibilities within a more-than-human aqueous ecology. It does so by offering posthumanist feminist theory as a means of troubling the anthropocentrism, individualism and nature–culture binaries of which human rights may not be able to divest itself, even when acknowledging community, relationality, and the rights of nature. At the same time, this paper acknowledges that the human right to water can be necessary and valuable, as it responds to a particular kind of relation between human bodies and watery nature. The posthumanist feminist aqueous imaginary offered in this paper is thus not a means of thinking against the human right to water, as much as it is a necessary thinking alongside it.