UCSF

This dissertation follows the practices of Black subsistence fishers along the tidal Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. I argue that in their comings and goings and doings at the banks of the river and within adjoining spaces contaminated by decades of pollution, they unsettle the proper and propertied logics otherwise dictating the course and feel of the riverscape. Against a backdrop of heightened redevelopment and increased scrutiny stemming from public fish consumption advisories, I present how fishers continue to go tightlining; improvise with refused materials; follow the river’s tendencies to erode, flood, and fill in with sediment; tie knots and loops; and clean their fish hauls. These practices amount to metaphorical and material ways of staying despite the many reproductions of property ushering in waves of racialized displacement and a state of overexposure. In keeping close with an as not-yet-fully-remediated river, sometimes taking contaminated fish home for food, fishers improperly take hold of the river in ways that rival (proper)tied notions of ownership and belonging. Through these everyday movements, they hone expansive notions of the self and maintain abundant relations with an imperfect riverscape.