Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Breathing in unbreathable circumstances is what we do every day in the chokehold of racial gendered ableist capitalism.

Nothing is objective.

My hope, my grand poetic intervention here is to move from identification, also known as that process through which we say what is what, like which dolphin is that over there and what are its properties, to identification, that process through which we expand our empathy and the boundaries of who we are become more fluid, because we identify with the experience of someone different, maybe someone of a whole different so-called species.

The function of dorsal fins for aquatic animals is stability. In water that is always moving, having a dorsal fin provides balance, autonomy, and support for the swift turns you might have to make in this oceanic life.

The prevailing explanation is that dolphins evolved the dense tissue that became dorsal fins because they needed to in order to live in the wild movement of the ocean. In other words, dolphins evolved dorsal fins from practice across generations. By accepting that the ocean would always move, and becoming accordingly. An embodied emphasis towards balance.

What does it mean to function as a group in a changing environment? How can we organize ourselves intentionally to combat the imbedded isolation of late capitalism? It seems like the dolphins (and our other interloping sharks…the manta rays) have something to tell us. From mothering as an emergent strategy in massive dolphin super-pods to pantropical synchronized swimming as a model of being prepared for large-scale direct action, the dolphins are educating us on how to squad, or pod up.

the water moves so quickly, and is so full and turbid that not much would be visible if they were looking with their eyes. So they look instead with their voices. The Indus and Ganges river dolphins live in sound. They make sound constantly, echolocating day and night. In a quickly moving environment they ask where, again where, again where.