NewBooks series (in collaboration with Waterscapes)
"Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern Africa and Americas"
Cristina Brito
CHAM – Center for the Humanities, NOVA FCSH, Lisbon
‘The light of my first day was not very clear, it was liquid and mushy.’ Aquatic animals experience their habitats, their own times and spaces much as any other animal does – through senses and through their intra- and interspecific relationships. Humans keep records of their own interactions and the entanglements with other mammals based on individual and collective experience. Grounded on accounts and sources of many typologies we can rewrite narratives about the historical encounters of two species, even if they are from different environments – that is, using sensorial and preserved memories. Moreover, we can try to voice forgotten agents that co-acted to forge common histories of the water environments, manatees among them.
Cristina Brito CHAM – Center for the Humanities, NOVA FCSH, Lisbon