One Part Water, Two Parts Starch: Performing oobleck as political resistance

Abstract

Oobleck is two things: a non-Newtonian fluid, a mixture of cornstarch and water showing properties of both a liquid and a solid; and an invention by Dr. Seuss, an odd green weather occurrence who’s fluid, adhesive, and elastic attributes manage to threaten the entire state apparatus of the “Kingdom of Didd.” Re-viewing the children’s book Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and in light of its starch-and-water namesake, I argue that we can learn an insurrective strategy of political resistance from its performativity.

Keywords

• non-human studies
• performativity
• activism
• anarchism
• reisistance
• oobleck
• literature
• inopertativity
• vulnerability
• occupy
• plant philosophy
• gilets jaunes
• plasticity