Fresh Waters, Anthropocene Futurisms, and Anti-Colonial Narrative Options

Beginning with an insistence on hydrosocial pluralities of fresh waters, this paper presents a comparison among three kinds of narrative futurisms: Octavia Butler’s 1993 parabolic futurism (from Parable of the Sower) of the arid southern California of 2024; Andrea Ballestero’s ethnographic future anterior as watery ontologies are negotiated between the regnant concepts of commodity and human right; and the increasingly geopolitcally-influential mainstream Anthropocene Fresh Water futurisms. I argue against five specific totalizing dangers and evangelical fervor of mainstream fresh water futurisms, suggesting instead that the social ontologies and narrative multiplicities offered by anti- and decolonial speculative fiction writers (Butler) and contemporary social scientists (Ballestero) are necessary for thinking and relating to fresh waters.