summary of Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology by Astrida Neimanis:

Astrida Neimanis’s Bodies of Water develops a posthuman feminist phenomenology that reimagines the human body not as a discrete, autonomous entity but as a watery being, entangled with planetary ecologies, other species, and the flow of matter across time and space. Neimanis argues that water is not merely a metaphor but the material condition of our existence—we are literally composed of water, sustained by it, and interconnected through its cycles of circulation. Drawing on feminist theory, phenomenology, environmental humanities, and new materialism, she proposes “hydrological subjectivity” as a way of understanding embodiment as porous, relational, and more-than-human. The book critiques dominant anthropocentric frameworks that treat the environment as external to the human, emphasizing instead how bodies are always immersed within and constituted by watery worlds, from amniotic fluid and breast milk to rivers, oceans, and rainfall. Through engagements with art, literature, activism, and ecological thought, Neimanis situates water as a medium of memory, politics, and responsibility: it carries traces of colonial histories, industrial pollution, and climate change, but also possibilities for feminist solidarity and ecological ethics. Importantly, Bodies of Water emphasizes that rethinking embodiment through water challenges hierarchical separations between humans and nonhumans, culture and nature, subject and object. Neimanis offers this watery phenomenology as both a critical intervention into environmental thought and a call for new imaginaries of belonging, vulnerability, and accountability in the Anthropocene. By positioning water as the connective tissue of planetary life, she shows how feminist theory can help articulate a posthuman politics that foregrounds interdependence, fluidity, and care in the face of ecological crisis.