A River Runs Through It: Reading the Text and Context of a River

This article is framed and inspired by Jacklyn Cock's Writing the Ancestral River (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018), which traces the history of the Kowie river in the Eastern Cape and its significance both in her own life and in shaping a specific geographical area. We set out to &qu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnglish Academy review Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 6 - 20
Main Authors Marshall, Adré, Marshall, Delia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 02.01.2024
Subjects
colonialism
cultural heritage
development
ecological awareness
estuaries
social justice
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Summary:This article is framed and inspired by Jacklyn Cock's Writing the Ancestral River (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018), which traces the history of the Kowie river in the Eastern Cape and its significance both in her own life and in shaping a specific geographical area. We set out to "read" the Kromme river through the lens of Cock's "biography-of-a-river" approach, which is both an evocative personal account and a social and environmental history of a river. Like the Kowie, the story of the Kromme river raises issues of competing interests; environmental, economic, and social justice concerns; and the tension between a river viewed in instrumentalist terms or as a complex, precious wetland and estuary. We consider questions such as whether the natural world in itself has inalienable rights, and whether rivers-even minor ones such as the Kromme-should have the right to be protected.
ISSN:1013-1752
1753-5360
DOI:10.1080/10131752.2023.2282338