Chapter 2 - Unidirectional Rivers and Reversible Seas. Global South and Water Metaphors in Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, and Zadie Smith

This essay examines three water-based articulations of socio-environmen- tal ecology as they emerge in the literary works of Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, and Zadie Smith. Special attention will be given to the cultural and aesthetic significance of water metaphors such as canals, rivers, seas, oceans, clouds, wells, and rain. The essay seeks to interpret the semiotics of water in relation to three paradigmatic sociocultural phenomena involving the relation- ships between the Global North and Global South: first, integration and com- plete fusion; second, dissimilation and contradiction; and third, indeterminacy and problematic coexistence. These forms of interrelation between the human and nonhuman will be analyzed as expressions of three types of humanity: unified agency, clash of differing identities, and existence in a post-epistemic world.