Published in 1985, Ivan Illich's H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness is the result of notes he took for a short lecture he gave in Dallas, as well as notes from a lecture given by his colleague Ruth Kriss-Rettenbeck. These lectures pertained to the question of whether the city of Dallas should create a four-block body of water in its midst. Illich's H2O addresses the subject of our cultural relationships with water over the ages, with specific regard to how this impacts the Dallas city lake proposal. After summarizing his essay below, I will take the position that it is not in Dallas's best interest to build a city lake, due to the way Illich educates us about the underlying meaning of water in human societies. Based on the historical information Illich provides, I believe that by continuing to use water to clean and purify our society we are alienating ourselves from the rest of the world.
H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: A summary.
Ivan Illich "wants to explore the moral and psychological consequences that will flow from the public display of re-circulated toilet flush, which pretends to be the aesthetic symbol of a wedding between water and urban space- (page 7). He does this by describing the history of human dwellings and their relationships with water, from ancient times until present.
Illich spends considerable time discussing urban space and the idea of a "dwelling space-. This concept of "dwelling- is central to his essay. He says a dwelling space is different from a place we just live in; to truly have a dwelling space, we have to experience it and be able to live within it, shape it and leave a trace of our existence behind. "Dwelling means living insofar as each moment shapes a community's own kind of space."" (p. 9) I think he means that to dwell in a space, the space needs to lend itself to interacting with its inhabitants. In contrast with this ideal of dwelling, Illich argues that people living in Dallas are for the most part not allowed to dwell there.