Hydrographies^*

* An earlier version of a brief portion of this article appeared in Ian Baucom, “Every Bit of It. All Complete,” the pamphlet essay accompanying The Unmapped Body: 3 Black British Artists, an exhibition at the Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 13 October 1998–3 January 1999.

Abstract

Drawing on the work of the theoretical biologist Humberto Maturana, I offer in this essay a way of conceptualizing the forms of identity that survive the various death pronouncements of our postidentitarian moment. I associate the work of imagining those strange new forms of identity with what Frederic Jameson calls “cognitive mapping,” arguing that these “afteridentities” can emerge from a “hydrographic” charting of the fluid cultural territories of the modern and the postmodern. In conclusion, I indicate how this approach may be of use in contemporary attempts to “map” the diasporic territories of the Black Atlantic.

• actualization and virtualization
• exchange
• liquidation and liquefaction
• newness
• survival

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Baucom

Dr. Baucom is an assistant professor of English at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708–0505.