Brian Holmes contemplates how our natural surroundings are suffused with the aftermath of colonial trauma and racial exploitation.

The Anthropocene River in Reverse

Is nature political? In this piece, Brian Holmes reflects on his experience as a traveler of the Anthropocene River Journey, contemplating how our natural surroundings are suffused with the aftermath of colonial trauma and racial exploitation. As these struggles have inscribed themselves into the territory and the very flow of the water, Holmes suggests approaching the site-specific history of racism and its legacies in corporate extractivism as a hermeneutic for reading the flood pulse that shapes contemporary Mississippi landscapes.