Fluid Dynamics of Queer Desire: Ellen van Neerven’s “Water” and Lía Chara’s Agua

Abstract: Queer desire flows through “Water,” (2014) by Mununjali author Ellen van Neerven, and Agua (2021), by Argentinian author Lía Chara. In both stories, flows of desire create a dynamic intersubjectivity between lovers, in the process destabilizing the boundaries of self and other, future and past, human and nonhuman. In these assemblages, queer theory finds consonance with enactive theories of self in which the mind is fundamentally embodied and distributed. The stories model such forms of self through the imagescape of water, flow, and spillage. A—fittingly—hybrid critical approach incorporating cultural linguistic, cognitive, and queer theory helps us to understand how “Water” and Agua erode Western, liberal identity categories.