Refractive Practice: Scuba Diving and Ontological Transformations in the Subterranean Water of Cenotes

Tien, Jianni

Refractive Practice: Scuba Diving and Ontological Transformations in the Subterranean Water of Cenotes

Tien, Jianni

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2022

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Tien, Jianni
dc.date.accessioned	2023-03-28T21:55:30Z
dc.date.available	2023-03-28T21:55:30Z
dc.date.issued	2022
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/168764
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	In this thesis, I demonstrate how scuba diving in cenotes is a fruitful method of enquiry for the environmental humanities. Cenotes are naturally occurring sinkholes that form when carbonate bedrock erodes and collapses, revealing groundwater. I develop a methodology of refractive practice and apply it to three sites: The cenotes of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, The Blue Hole in New Mexico, United States, and Kilsby Sinkhole near Mount Gambier in South Australia. I situate my methodology of refractive practice as a mode of encounter with the geologic formations of cenotes, a transcorporeal (Alaimo, 2010) exchange between the body and the geological. Through refractive practice, the cenotes are encountered in three different ways, which lead to three distinct findings. 1) the cenote is encountered through site visits which I term porous visitation. Porous visitation harnesses the affective power of scuba diving cenotes to think through the inherent entanglement of the material and discursive elements of each place. 2) the cenote is encountered through technological mediation, including the scuba apparatus as well as through photographs and videos. The technics of scuba diving are an enmeshment of the self with the technological, an assemblage that disrupts the binary narratives of the Anthropocene. 3) the cenote is encountered through the embodied practice of scuba diving, which engages our “geologic corporeality” (Yusoff, 2013). I position the cenote as a feminist figuration that unsettles our normative ontological categorisations. I argue that ontological transformation can be catalysed through bodily immersion in spaces of affective displacement. Scuba diving in cenotes is an embodied and uncanny engagement with dazzling geological formations, an affective experience that reorients our relationship with the environment. Such ontological transformations are a key ethical response to the complex ethico-onto-epistemological (Barad, 2007) challenges of the Anthropocene.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/168764/2/02whole.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2022 Jianni Tien
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.title	Refractive Practice: Scuba Diving and Ontological Transformations in the Subterranean Water of Cenotes	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	embargoed	*
utslib.copyright.embargo	2025-02-07T00:00:00+1000

Abstract:

In this thesis, I demonstrate how scuba diving in cenotes is a fruitful method of enquiry for the environmental humanities. Cenotes are naturally occurring sinkholes that form when carbonate bedrock erodes and collapses, revealing groundwater. I develop a methodology of refractive practice and apply it to three sites: The cenotes of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, The Blue Hole in New Mexico, United States, and Kilsby Sinkhole near Mount Gambier in South Australia. I situate my methodology of refractive practice as a mode of encounter with the geologic formations of cenotes, a transcorporeal (Alaimo, 2010) exchange between the body and the geological. Through refractive practice, the cenotes are encountered in three different ways, which lead to three distinct findings. 1) the cenote is encountered through site visits which I term porous visitation. Porous visitation harnesses the affective power of scuba diving cenotes to think through the inherent entanglement of the material and discursive elements of each place. 2) the cenote is encountered through technological mediation, including the scuba apparatus as well as through photographs and videos. The technics of scuba diving are an enmeshment of the self with the technological, an assemblage that disrupts the binary narratives of the Anthropocene. 3) the cenote is encountered through the embodied practice of scuba diving, which engages our “geologic corporeality” (Yusoff, 2013). I position the cenote as a feminist figuration that unsettles our normative ontological categorisations. I argue that ontological transformation can be catalysed through bodily immersion in spaces of affective displacement. Scuba diving in cenotes is an embodied and uncanny engagement with dazzling geological formations, an affective experience that reorients our relationship with the environment. Such ontological transformations are a key ethical response to the complex ethico-onto-epistemological (Barad, 2007) challenges of the Anthropocene.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/168764