Critical Floating

I live in Montana, and in the summer, I don’t fish, hunt, hike, or camp. I float. That is, I slather on some sun screen, get into an inner tube, and let the current take me down a river.

Now, of course, I’ve made it sound simpler than it really is. There’s a matter of driving cars and leaving tubes and cars and car keys in strategic locations so no one gets stranded. Then, the inflatable cooler must be appropriately stocked with cheap tall boys and lashed to my tube for easy access. But really, after all that’s done, I really do just sit down in my tube and let the river take me.

As I see it, there are several different ways of floating a river. I tend to lay back and enjoy the ride, only kicking when the current forces me into rocks or tree branches. Others kick and pull with their arms constantly to stay right with the flow of the current.

Once a buddy floated down the wrong fork and wound up stuck in a shallow eddy. He simply picked up his tube and walked on the shallow river bottom until he rejoined us. We called him the Philosopher Floater: he contemplated his situation, picked his way through the problem, and re-established normal floating rhythms.

The Philosopher Floater got me thinking about other patterns people engage in to float the river.
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What kind of floater are you?

The New Historicist Floater—faces backward, looking at where he’s been. The scenery does not inform a firm conclusion about the current.

The Formalist Floater—only the current itself informs the ride. Much flailing of arms and legs to stay in the current.

The Reader Response Floater—floats in silence and allows others to float according to their own “reading” of the current

The Marxist Floater—can think only about the material forces that conspired to create the rubber in her tube. She cannot sit in her tube but swims beside the Post-Colonial Floater who has studied the imperialist history and colonizing conditions of the location of the rubber tree from which sprang her friend’s tube. Understanding the current is secondary to understanding the means on which they ride the current’s back.

The Psychoanalytic Floater—wonders how the disturbed water fowl, beavers, and indeed, the current itself feel about being part of his “ride” through their world. Floats with arms tucked inside the tube.

The Structuralist Floater—Only the rocks and tree branches along the bank can provide the meaning of the current, but the flow of the current may not be determined without a diachronic analysis of where the river has been.

The Deconstruction Floater—the current can never be understood or known except as it once was NOT a current because of the polyvalent power of drought. Drinks copiously during the float.

The Feminist/Gender Studies Floater—holds on to the tube with one arm, investigating but not participating in the “hole” in the tube as a representation of phallocentric forces that diminish the “hole’s” power.

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Despite the kind of floater you are, maybe it’s best to remember that we all emerge from the river soaking wet, perhaps a little tipsy, and (hopefully) smiling from the ride.