A Discussion of Body as Estuary

Mixed Being, Being Mixed: We Are Estuary

Bibliographic Data

ID21737683
AuthorsChanda D Griffin (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume27
Issue2
Pages82-86
Publication date2026-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Gender and Sexuality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1524-0657 • E-ISSN: 1940-9206
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15240657.2026.2671539
OpenAlexW7167638788
LanguageEN
References cited19

This article engages with “Body as Estuary” by Sal Daña to explore the estuary as both an example and a metaphor for the “mixed” body’s embodiment and relationality. In resonance with the author, I also explore the estuary as a model of self—inherently multiple, fluid, and situated within a broader ecology of relations and counterbinary distinctions, such as human/animal, black/white, and/or male/female. In the practice of placing psychoanalysis in conversation with more-than-human and decolonial epistemologies, I discuss a needed paradigm shift regarding interconnection and separateness that borrows from African and Indigenous cultures and quantum physics. The writer highlights the limits of existing beliefs that shape our onto-epistemes and proposes that we find a new way of imagining beingness and identity not as fixed or singular, but as dynamic, relational, interconnected, and separate

Conversation · Estuary · Indigenous · Metaphor · Situated · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

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